Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ ½
Genre: Historical Fiction + LGBTQIA+

I have been looking for WWII stories that offer something different. Fortunately, These Days turned out to be different from what I have read in the past. The story takes place in Belfast during the 1941 bombings. It follows two sisters, Audrey and Emma Bell, who face the challenges and devastations of war. Their journey highlights how the air raids impact individual lives and the strength required to get through such tough times.

Audrey, who is considered among the two sisters to be the one who is more practical, is engaged to a doctor, while Emma, the one with the more rebellious personality, has an affair with a woman. As bombs ravage the city, their lives become unstable, confronting personal and societal expectations. Caldwell explores love, identity, and human resilience amid change, fear, loss, and bravery.

The novel explores love, identity, and resilience against the harrowing backdrop of the Belfast Blitz during World War II. It shines in its vivid depiction of a city under siege, capturing both the physical destruction and the emotional toll on its inhabitants. Caldwell’s prose is lyrical and evocative, drawing readers into the world of the Bell sisters, Audrey and Emma, as they navigate the chaos of war and the complexities of their personal lives.

Audrey’s pragmatic approach to life and Emma’s secret same-sex relationship provide two contrasting but equally compelling perspectives on love and societal expectations. Caldwell sensitively handles their struggles, adding depth and emotional resonance to the narrative.

However, the novel’s introspective tone and deliberate pacing may not appeal to all readers. The story sometimes lingers on the sisters’ internal conflicts, slowing the momentum and making certain sections feel repetitive. While Audrey and Emma are well-developed, secondary characters often lack the same depth, leaving the world somehow uneven. Regardless of the cons, I ended up liking it and appreciating what it offered.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book.

Lucy Caldwell’s historical fiction novel These Days is set in Belfast, Ireland during the German blitz of WWII. The book is about two sisters, and focuses on the stories of women in war. It’s an easy and entertaining read with a nice flow, told from multiple perspectives, with vivid and well-researched depictions of the four nights during which Belfast was under attack by German bombs.

Admittedly, I found myself more interested in the history than the characters’ individual storylines. I love a blitz novel, and found this one to be tense, exciting, and emotional (but not necessarily super original), with young, likable characters coming of age while surrounded by war.

What was missing- I was hoping for more about how the divided city of Belfast specifically felt about being bombed because they were part of Great Britain.

What was pleasantly surprising- rampant burgeoning feminism, set as women began to question what they wanted and rebel against traditional gender expectations of marriage and motherhood, and even a queer perspective. That was an unexpected bonus to this story of two young women in a rapidly changing world.

Thank you @NetGalley and @faberbooks for the ARC.

Set in Belfast as World War II has begun, this is a story of how the war affected those whose lives were upended, as well as those whose lives were ended, period. This story revolves around Audrey and Emma, sisters, and how the war changed their lives, and the lives of so many others.

This is partially a love story, a story of a love hidden from the world. How, perhaps, the war gave them more courage to live their lives without sharing their secrets.


Pub Date: 18 Mar 2025


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Zando / SJP Lit

Not really my thing, not the type of stories I usually like. I would say the setting is pretty interesting and the context rather informative but this wasn't a really enjoyable read for me. However, I think this could be a nice book for a certain audience liking period pieces of war or troubles such as those.

This book was a slow burner with so many mundane conversations. I fast forwarded much of the book . The characters were shallow and uninteresting. The historical events of the various air raids on Belfast in April of 1941 presented an account of how devastating war is on people .

The author gave an accurate story of the Belfast Blitz and how two sisters worked through it. I was touched reading how they worked together to survive.

this novel wasn’t exactly what i expected it to be. which may be my fault, to be fair.

i went into this book expecting it to be focused on the lives of two sisters in belfast during world war ii. it is that, in a sense. however, i felt so disconnected from not only audrey and emma but also from all of the other characters introduced throughout the novel. i understand this is a war novel, but i was expecting audrey and emma to be the stars of the show—not the war itself.

i will say that lucy caldwell’s ability to set a scene is spectacular. she really puts you in the world of belfast during the war and describes everything in immense but not overwhelming detail. my knowledge about northern ireland during wwii is minimal; this book definitely made me interested in learning more about how the war impacted this area.

i suppose this novel wasn’t character driven enough for me. i didn’t feel attached to any of them. there were too many side characters that i couldn’t care less about. i wanted to stay with emma and audrey and get a sense of their characters more than i did. this book just fell flat for me unfortunately.

tl;dr: the characters in this novel have as much personality as drywall. also, shoutout belfastians.

(thanks to the publisher and netgalley for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review!)

I’m not usually a huge fan of historical WWII fiction as I find that it veers quite sentimental. However, I absolutely devoured These Days. The story is split between two sisters, flighty Audrey who longs for love and is trying desperately to convince herself that she’s found it, and her sister Emma who briefly experiences a different life altogether. I do think that the Northern Irish setting gives the novel something a little different to others in the genre along with Caldwell’s really strong and resonant narrative voice. She paces this perfectly and manages to capture the individual alongside the political beautifully. It has the credit of feeling completely unique to its place and time but also universal in the relationships that they all have to one another. You get the sense of a country in flux at the same time as these women are discovering their own places in the world.

Thanks to Zando | SJP Lit and NetGalley for this ARC of These Days by Lucy Caldwell.

Historical fiction isn't really my cuppa tea but it was the Belfast setting that attracted me. The author captured the place and the voices very well but unfortunately it didn't really grab me as a novel. I'm not the target audience.

Emma and Audrey are two young sisters living in Belfast during 1941. Emma, volunteering for the First Aid Corps, is secretly in love with her supervisor Sylvia. Audrey, recently engaged, is beginning to feel pangs of deep sadness at the thought of having to leave her job and become a wife and mother. The story takes place over four days during the bombing of Belfast in April of 1941. The tragedy and horror of the blitz will force Emma and Audrey to make choices that could change their lives forever.

At only 288 pages, These Days was a quick and easy read. I found the story very compelling and the writing to be engaging. These Days navigates themes of trauma, loss, grief, feminism and sexuality all through the lens of the Belfast Blitz. I would highly recommend this book!

I loved Caldwell’s short story collection, Intimacies, so I was thrilled to get into this, historical fiction about two sisters living through the Belfast Blitz in Northern Ireland during WWII. I found this deeply moving, very atmospheric, and the story feels like the author spent a lot of time researching it’s basis. Caldwell is from Belfast which comes across in her ease of descriptions of place and environment. I’m American, so in no way mean to criticize Caldwell's ability to write her own dialect, but I did occasionally find certain exclamations a bit…clumsy, I guess? Inner thoughts that felt like words a person would say externally, but probably not think internally. Even though the background is this extremely devastating historical event, there is still much focus on the individual characters and their outer lives vs. their inner desires. I do personally prefer her short stories to her novels, but I do think that’s an individual preference, not a fault of the novel. I just found the writing at times to be dragging. Also, my guess is that this is a fault of reading an arc, and will probably not be an issue in the final copy, but there was some changing of tense while following characters. Past voice would be used followed by present voice five sentences later, which just threw me off a bit.

This novel was good and very interesting. The setting in Belfast during WWII opened my eyes on what the war meant to its inhabitants. The reader could also witness the differences in the conditions of life between Ulster and Eire, theoretically neutral (but that's another story). I also enjoyed the main characters' development: how the war affected them psychologically. Two sisters and their mother struggled to find out what was really important in life. Florence, the mother reflected on the past (regrets?), while Audrey and Emma wondered about the present , the here and now. Love is the heart of their matter, if I may say. Love also has many facets... Interesting women who are also victims of the social times from the pre-war periods: how will the conditions of their lives in this war affect their future? Will they dare? A short novel, but a powerful one.
I received a digital copy of this novel from NetGalley and I have voluntarily written an honest review.

"These Days" by Lucy Caldwell is a historical fiction novel set in Belfast during World War II. The story focuses on a family, specifically two sisters, Audrey and Emma. One is engaged to be married, while the other is in a relationship with a woman. Throughout the novel, Caldwell tells the story of Belfast's survival through multiple points of view. The book vividly portrays how civilians cope with the attacks over the next two months and how this shapes their lives and thoughts about the future. I recommend this novel to fans of Sarah Waters' "The Night Watch" and Emma Donoghue's "The Pull of the Stars." Thank you to NetGalley and Zando for the ARC.

I haven’t read a Lucy Caldwell book that I haven’t liked. Her latest, These Days, was no exception! It was a fantastic read!

I really enjoyed reading this book, it had that historical fiction element that I was looking for from this type of book. I enjoyed the way the sisters were written and thought the overall concept worked well together. It had that feel that I was looking for from a historical setting and really thought it was realistic and glad everything worked overall. Lucy Caldwell has a strong writing style and enjoyed everything going on with this story.