Rosalind Arden lives near the village of Brierley at Stratford-upon-Avon and in the county of Warwickshire, with her father Leo and stepmother Alma. Rosalind has three sisters Bianca, Cordelia and Kate and two brothers Will and Jamie. Her father is proud of his ancestry, one of the oldest family's in England and the great William Shakespeare once stayed at Arden House.

The house is old and it’s in need of extensive repairs and the tenant cottages in the village are just as bad. Mr. Arden’s solution to his money problems is to find his daughters rich husbands, Bianca is busy planning her wedding and her father has picked out a suitable candidate for Rosalind.

Rosalind has told her father she will never marry him, he’s a creep and her father won’t listen. Rosalind meets Guy Thompson, who she does fancy and her papa forbids her from seeing him. Leo Arden’s is consumed by keeping his estate and he’s too conceited and vain to admit he’s being selfish. England is on the brink of fighting in another war, when it begins, Will, Jamie and Guy enlist and men from Brierley. Miss. Parsons is the local school teacher and she runs the museum and she decides it’s time to give the sisters their leather bound works of Shakespeare and within the pages each will find a hidden message from their departed mother.

Rosalind moves to London, she takes photographs of the awful destruction caused by the German bombs and sells them to a women’s magazine. Like all English families it’s only a matter of time before they lose a loved one in the war, Rosalind returns to Arden House, her stepmother needs her, her frail father might have no choice but to sell some of the estates land and Rosalind waits to here from Guy.

I received a copy of The Shakespeare Sisters by Juliet Greenwood from NetGalley and Storm Publishing in exchange for an honest review. The first book in the series focuses on Rosalind, living in Brierley, and her trying to find the hidden message from her mother between the pages of Shakespeare’s Comedies, moving to London and the long war years. I liked the characters of Rosalind, Alma, Guy, Kate, Jamie, Miss. Parson’s and all are charming. The history of Arden House, found on the grounds are; a possible Roman mosaic, jewellery and an Anglo-Saxon burial ground. I look forward to reading the next book in the series and four stars from me.

Rosalind and her sisters live in a village where they are known for their ancestry and connection to Shakespeare. Her father, a bit of a kook, is so wrapped up in this legacy that his children are named after some of Shakespeare's famous characters. He is also short on cash so as one does during the early 1900s he focuses on marrying off his daughters to the highest bidders. But that is not what Rosalind wants and the upcoming war is the perfect out.

The story follows Rosalind as she navigates moving away from what society and her family expects of her into the new and modern world and mindset that is forming.

All in all, the basis and outline for this story is fantastic. But it falls short. The title promises a story of sisterhood and following the lives of these sisters with unique names. Instead, it follows Rosalind at a fairly shallow level. I kept turning the pages looking for the rest of the story and the depth. I unfortunately did not find it.

Four sisters and a house the father would give anything to save. Are the sisters willing to sacrifice anything to save their home? Or do they have plans of their own?

I enjoyed this story, I understood how it was hard not to give in to their father.

Really enjoyed this book.
Well written, with great characters. With the Second World War comes the time of chances, a woman can seize her chance to do something she wants instead of what is expected of her

(2.5 stars, rounded up)

Content warnings: war, attempted rape, loss of a sibling

Rosalind Arden is a modern woman trapped in 1940s England. She's expected to marry for money to help the crumbling Arden estate stay afloat, but she is more interested in photography than wooing a suitor. Her heart belongs to a man her father wouldn't deem suitable for marriage, and the men her father deems suitable are diabolical. Rosalind grapples with whether to follow her dreams or to reduce her life to what is expected of her.

Her older sister Bianca has already married for money, but her husband's scheming may ruin the entire Arden clan. But when war strikes, the sisters' worlds will be forever changed.

Recommended for readers who enjoy English family sagas.

Representation: women with careers in WWII

Four girls, sisters, named after famous female Shakespeare Characters. A step mother who is trying her best and a father who is distant, curmudgeonly and simply wants them to conform to society and his wishes.

Rosalind, is the main character in this book. She lives in the crumbling family home on an estate full of crumbling tenant cottages. The only way for them to survive is to marry rich husbands. That is what her sister Bianca has done. Rosalind has other ideas.

Those ideas do not tie with her fathers. Discord reigns in the house amongst them all and with the threat of war it seems all their lives are going to change forever.

Rosalind finds herself in London. With her camera and an idea of recording the war, but events find her back at home and she decides to seek out the truth of the war from those a bit further away from the major cities. Trouble is her father is still insistent on her future with one man.

This is a book packed full of family harmony and disharmony, the relationships between sisters is paramount to setting the scene for future novels. There is romance in this book, under the shadow of war, and whether to marry for money or duty. As the Second World showed women were starting to have more of a role in society and could quite easily find themselves on the same level as their male counterparts. Rosalind wanted a relationship that reflected this, her father didn’t.

The first book I have read by Greenwood and whilst it’s pace didn’t really change and I found quite a slow methodical read, it was a good start to a series introducing us to everyone. I just wonder whether it started too late in the main characters lives, I would like to have learnt a bit more of their history before we got to the starting point of this novel.

Good historical fiction if that is your thing.

Rosalind is one of four sisters living in Arden House before the Second World War. A brave, bright young woman, interested in photography, she's expected to marry to save the family finances, but when she realizes the man her vain father wants her to marry is not what she wants, she runs to London, working first as a driver but soon building a reputation as a photographer capturing the horror of the Blitz. The book sees her, during the war and after, torn between her loyalty to her family and the man she loves. My thanks to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my review.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this book. It was a little bit slow getting off the ground, but it picked up from there.

The Shakespeare Sisters, set during WW2, is centred around one of the oldest houses in England, Arden House, the residence of four sisters, Bianca, Cordelia, Rosalind and Kate, and their brothers Will and Jamie, Papa and Step Mother, Alma. I initially thought the book would be about all four women, however, it is primarily Rosalind's story and is narrated by her.
We learn early on that there is an air of mystery surrounding Kates's parentage, which never really gets solved, the other girls see her as a sister and that is that. The four girls are each presented with a Shakespeare novel, which their mother instructed happened at ' the right time before she passed away.
The book picks up pace after the first few chapters, it's well written but I felt the ending was quite rushed.
I enjoyed it but I wanted to know more at certain times and I wished it would have delved into the lives of the other three sisters more. Binaca married a tyrant but we never learned what that was really like for her, we never get to grips with Kate and how she really feels or what at all was happening in Cordelia's life.
Alma is a good character but with an air of mystery and secrecy that left me wondering about things that were never addressed at all.
It was quite frustrating at times, this book had so much more potential, however, it was still an enjoyable read.

The first 25% of the book spans from June 1938 to August 1939.
Rosalind and her family are introduced, their late mother leaves the daughters books of Shakespeare that supposedly hold messages for each of them, the eldest daughter (read: the “obedient” one) gets married, and Rosalind engages in instalove with a guy named Guy.
This reads more like a Bridgerton novel than a WWII historical fiction book. The language doesn’t seem to match the time period.
I kept stopping after every chapter to reread the book summary, which is very enticing, and found myself wondering when the war was going to start. The idea of the book has promise but I can’t bring myself to continue reading it. DNF at 25%.
Thank you to NetGalley for my digital ARC.

This novel has all ingredients necessary to make a romance: love, unreturned love, forbidden love because of social class differences. For me it was all unfortunately rather predictable as far as all those feelings were concerned. However, a mystery evolves, some of the characters' interests in photography, archeology, Many references to Shakespeare made this novel rather interesting. Well written, this story should appeal to readers of romance.
I received a complimentary ARC of this novel from NetGalley and Storm Publishing and I am leaving voluntarily an honest review.

At the outbreak of World War II, with her autocratic father fixated on saving the crumbling Arden estate by marrying his daughters to the highest bidder, Rosalind falls for commoner Guy Thompson, a school friend of her older brother. Guy yearns for a career as an architect, while his father wants him to run the family business, but as war breaks out, both Guy and Rosalind’s brothers are caught up in the fighting. Disowned by her father when she refuses to wed a wealthy but slimy duke’s heir, Rosalind flees with her beloved camera to London, where she works for a women’s magazine, documenting the effect of the blitz on the stalwart Londoners who remain. But when her older brother is killed and her injured younger brother inherits, she feels obligated to return to Arden to help him recover and run the estate he never wanted. There, she works to protect Arden from the schemes of her older sister’s industrialist husband, who wants to destroy the centuries-old village common land and forest to build vacation homes for the wealthy. Though the description of the gradual decline of the wealth and influence of old landed gentry seems to belong more to a post-World-War I world than that of World War II, I suppose the disappearance of that way of life did not happen overnight. And when Guy comes back into her life, Rosalind has to make a difficult choice between the heritage she tried to escape and ultimately returned to save, and a new way of life.

this is the story of four sisters, ancestors of William Shakespeare, really lovely setting. i enjoyed the story very much.

This is the second Juliet Greenwood book that I have read, it wasn't my favorite of the two but was still good. I expected The Shakespeare Sisters to be a bit more of a cozy novel, a Shakespeare-focused view of life in the country during WWII. Boy did I get that wrong.

To save the family home, Rosalind, like her sisters, is to be married off to men with money and titles. Set to be married off to her neighbor instead of the man she cares for, Rosalind rebels. Traditionally, she would have had no alternative options, but with the increased need for women staffers due to WWII, Rosalind flees to London and uses her skills as a photographer to fund her life. Capturing the hardships and terror of Blitz-torn London, Rosalind finds new depth and meaning to life.

Overall, I loved this book, however, I felt like Rosalind's growth arc was stunted. From a sheltered country girl to a woman who captures the horrors of the Blitz, I would assume Rosalind would grow up more, but emotionally and mentally she is hardly changed from the character you meet at the start of the book. Though having not lived through the Blitz, maybe that did happen.

Thanks to Netgalley and Storm Publishing for an e-ARC in exchange for a fair review

As soon as I saw this book, I knew I had to read it. It is a beautiful story in which we learn the fate of Rosalind Arden and her family. I liked how the author describes this selected period from 1938 to Christmas 1945. I was delighted with how much the main character's fate drew me in and involved me in the story. It is a beautiful story about the power of women, family ties, love and the courage to pursue your dreams and make your own decisions

I am still missing this book now that I have finished it and do hope that there will be a sequel.

I was a bit worried at the start of reading as my knowledge of Shakespeare’s works is not vast, but this didn’t matter at all. I loved the feisty Rosalind and could, through the skill of the author, put myself in her shoes, especially at the start of World War Two. I kept praying that she would make the right choice for a life partner too.

Having read another review that said the reader was swept away into the world of the Shakespeare sisters, I would completely agree. A great read that has me wanting more.

Ancestors of William Shakespeare supposedly, the sisters in this novel are making their way through life, especially Rosalind and her work as a war photographer during WWII. Sensitively written, recommended.

Alright. Here are the things that checked the boxes for me:

- Shakespeare references throughout
- female photographer during WWII (I cried a lot, y’all.)
- women supporting women
- small town people banding together

I wanted to love this book. Shakespeare and a WWII romance? I was all in, except that I couldn’t get into it. I would say this book is primarily about Rosalind’s growth, except that she grows very little throughout the book, even though it’s timeline spans several years, including a war.

As a photographer myself, I wish I loved Rosalind more. But her primary attribute was flat stubbornness, and I just wanted more from her. She prides herself in being unchanged when others around her have changed. Guy was a wonderful love interest, but we saw so little of him, and we didn’t really get to see the relationship between Guy and Rosalind develop. It’s a bad case of telling, not showing.

I deserved a trigger warning for Henry Luscombe. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

Alma and Lucy were my favorites. And Jamie. They had the most character development, and as a reader, I felt more connected to them in their pain and triumph because of that growth factor. And maybe because the conflicts that they navigated were more realistically fleshed out, compared with the rest of the book and what the other characters faced.

There’s more I could say, but I’ll finish with this—while presenting a nice story, the title leaves the impression that this book is about the sisters and their relationships to each other or their respective journeys. But no. It’s just about Rosalind. I wanted more of the sisters and even more of Jamie and Guy. So while this book definitely checked some good boxes, it missed the mark for me.

Thank you to NetGalley, Storm Publishing, and Juliet Greenwood for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

What a marvel of a WWII histfic novel set in England. I was so taken by Rosalind and her sisters, the impact of war on their family, her new life photographing the impact of the blitz, and being called home again afterward.

I loved the characters, the expertly drawn era, and the author's graceful telling of how war changes English life and the family at historic Arden House, once frequented by Shakespeare.

Highly recommended for histfic lovers, those gripped by the blitz, and readers who value tales about families who survive war.

The novel was a delight to read. The prose was beautiful and the book practically reads itself. I finished it in record time.

Despite The Shakespeare Sisters being four, the story focuses primarily on Rosalind and the life she want to forge for herself in a world plagued by the war and by a patriarchal view of women, their place in society and who gets to decide for them. I deeply felt for Rosalind and her struggle against a domineering, extremely stubborn old fashioned and full of himself father whose goal in life to marry his children in the most advantageous of ways to perpetuate the family name and replenish the coffers of their country estate…which gave a Pride and Prejudice feel to the story, despite being set in a completely different era.

I found fascinating the way the author wrote about the generational gap (which isn’t as black and white as one might think) and about the mass constructing of homes (gentrification) in country estates and villages which is not necessarily a good thing.

If I may be allowed one little critique, I wasn’t 100% sold on Rosalind’s whirlwind romance. It was perhaps a teensy bit rushed and I am still debating if it was truly necessary. It might warrant a reread.

Nevertheless I have truly enjoyed this delightful 4.5⭐️/5 novel and I truly hope we’ll see more of the Arden sisters.