Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. I savored these characters; their lives and their hardships; how they broke apart and came together; etc.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher on netgalley.

DNF. I was bored and didn't love most of the characters or the writing. I have read and adored a few other similar type books focusing on women in Britain during WW1 and 2 so it wasn't the genre. it just didn't grab me but I'm sure it will be enjoyed by others.

Loved it! Highly recommend

Book club pick

So interesting

I loved the format of this book. Hearing a story through many different voices and formats (diaries, letters, third-person narrator, etc.) was really fascinating to me! It took me a little while to get into it, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that I enjoyed it in the end.

This is one of those books that has gotten an incredible amount of publicity. I started reading it thinking that I was not going to like it and "what was all the fuss about anyway". But now I am one of the many admirers. What a fabulous plot. Author Jennifer Ryan has captured the personalities of her characters so well. She has created a wonderful closeness of the small village that I can just imagine the people walking around from house to house visiting each other. I can imagine the women gathering for choir practice.

World War II has begun to involve Britain. The men of this small village have been drafted to serve. The women ban together to support those who are losing husbands and sons. As the war progresses and begins to encompass their world more and more they continue to lend strength to each other.

In this novel we follow the diary entries and personal correspondence of four women. Kitty Winthrop, a young girl writing in her diary, Venetia is her older sister writing to a friend who has gone off to London to work for the war effort. Mrs Tilling writes in her journal and Edwina Paltry writes letters to her sister, Clara. So in this way we get varying perspectives of the same events, which keeps the plot moving forward with different viewpoints of the gossip and happenings that are the everyday life of a small village.

There is an accepted way of life in a small British village. Kitty Winthrop writes in her diary about the idea of life in the countryside of England, "...I suddenly began to doubt if she really knew the countryside, how attached everyone is to tradition around here. There is something called conventional wisdom, which means we have to carry on doing things the same way, even when it doesn't make sense. that's what countryside's about."

Then along comes Miss Primrose Trent, known throughout the novel as Prim. She comes to live in Chilbury and is the music teacher at the Litchfield University. She starts the Chilbury Ladies' Choir and forces the women to come out of their comfort zone. They create the Ladies' Choir to help themselves and others keep their spirits up. Mrs Tilling writes in her journal, "Funny how a bit of singing brings us together. There we were in our own little worlds, with our own problems, and then suddenly they seemed to dissolve, and we realized that it's us here now, living through this, supporting each other. That's what counts."

Among the choir members there is the widow who lost her husband in the first war and now has to send her only son off to the army. There is the young girl, Kitty with a unrequited crush on a soldier. Her older sister, Venetia who feels trapped in the small village and is dreaming of a more exotic life. She gets romantically involved with a dashing stranger who comes to town. Silvie, a small child, who is a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia living with the Winthrop family, hiding a family secret. Edwina, a conniving midwife, running from her seedy past. Along the way other characters come to town to stir up the mix of villagers. The colonel who is billeted to live in the home of Mrs. Tilling. The mysterious handsome stranger who has come to the village to paint. The wounded solider who comes home to get on with his life.

All these characters help build the drama that creates so much of the intrigue, heartbreak and life and death matters this small village to deal with. Twists and turns keep the reader's curiosity piqued until the very end of the novel.

"The Chilbury Ladies' Choir" is a wonderful historical novel that will charm and intrigue any lover of literary fiction. Set in the English countryside and told in letters and diary entries, Jennifer Ryan has given readers a unique story full of characters who will capture your heart and demand your attention. It's the perfect novel for fans of "Major Pettigrew's Last Stand" by Helen Simonson and "Everyone Brave is Forgiven" by Chris Cleave.

The parallels between this book and [book: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society] are obvious – both epistolary novels about women on the homefront of England as WWII heats up, telling the story from several women's points of view. Here there is a choir instead of a book club, but it is the story of villagers coming together to endure the horrors of the war at home.

Regardless, though, this is a lovely book. The likeable characters are very likeable, and the unlikeable ones are truly loathsome (at about the halfway point I was all but praying for the death of one). The women's individual voices as evidenced in letters and journal entries are fairly distinct, especially the youngest, Kitty, the precocious had–been–youngest child of the local blue bloods. Her voice might be a little <i>too</i> precocious, a little too adult, in its language, but its attitudes are pretty much dead on.

Except … I continually find it deeply frustrating that girls and women who <I>know better</i> engage in the sort of behavior Lavinia (?) does. "I'm being careful", she says. And then she is shocked – shocked, I say! – when after sleeping with her inamorato every chance she gets she finds herself – gasp! – pregnant. Never saw that coming! Passion. I get it. I do. But for heaven's sake, why does "passionate" automatically mean "stupid"? I mean, if you go to the worst part of town and leave your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition, you have basically requested that your car be stolen. If you drink for several hours and then weave your way out to your car, you have tacitly agreed to having – or causing – an accident. If you decide to play golf with some nice metal clubs in the middle of a thunderstorm with heavy lightning, you have indicated your willingness to be struck by lightning. And if you have unprotected sex with someone who just doesn't care … well. The girl is young – but she's not stupid, and – as evidenced by her comment about being careful – she knows that sex leads to pregnancy, unlike girls left in ignorance in previous centuries, when sex was too awful a subject to be discussed and so girls really are shocked by what that nice man wants to do and by the result. Just once, I feel like I'd like to see a reaction from someone more along the lines of "Welp, that was predictable."

But, still and all, it was a very enjoyable book, slotting neatly into the shelf next to "Guernsey", with enough of its own personality to remain discrete. "We have prayer enough to light up the whole universe, like a thousand stars breathing life into our deepest fears." Nice. Very nice.

The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.

Very endearing pleasant read. I would recommend to anyone looking for a great entertaining experience.

This is a refreshing perspective on how women supported each at the beginning of WWII. This tale follows a group of women of various backgrounds and characters and even though they can be mean, vain, annoyingly boring, it is quite interesting to see them gaining confidence singing in a choir and having to deal with the fears of living the war. Many subplots are intertwined which distract us from the most interesting element: women proving to themselves that they can be strong on their own but mostly, by helping ans supporting each other's. Pleasant read.

I’ve spent a lot of years in church choirs of various flavors. I’ve been in the choir of an Episcopalian church with a director who was such an amazing musician that if a piece of music didn’t work for our voices, he would simply write a new arrangement. I’ve also been in a UU choir where the director made us rehearse a capella to force us to truly listen to each other.

Many people erroneously believe that the point of choral singing is to blend everyone’s voice into one homogeneous sound, but the real goal is for each voice to harmonize, so that many individual voices combine into new sounds. Sometimes they’re unison, sometimes the separate notes – the separate voices – are meant to be heard.

In this lovely novel, The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir, Jennifer Ryan has done the latter. She has created a collection of individual voices – a young window, a refugee, the church ladies you expect to find in such a setting, and she has given them solid unison pieces in which they blend – their determination to keep their choir alive with all the men gone – but she has also let their individual talents shine.

Epistolary novels can be tricky – it’s much harder to maintain the distinctions between characters when so much of the story is in first-person accounts – but Ryan has done so deftly. I felt immersed in these women’s lives, enjoying their triumphs and shedding tears at their sorrows.

Each of the women whose voices we hear in this novel are distinct personalities, with loves and fears and wants and desires, and each one has a compelling story that, when blended together forms a chorus of voices painting a word-picture of their village in a specific period of time.

Many people have compared this novel to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, me included, but though they share a similar period, The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir is vastly different – it’s more candid, more personal, and more rooted in feminine sensibilities. Still, if you liked one, you’ll probably enjoy the other. I did.

Goes well with shortbread biscuits and hot tea, maybe with a splash of whiskey in it.

When I started this book I was sure I wasn't going to like it. Two of the characters were pretty horrible people right off the bat and I almost didn't even want to continue reading about them. But, I thought about The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield; I almost quit reading because I didn't like two of the characters but I ended up loving the book at the end. So I kept going, and I'm pretty glad I did. There were things that bothered me but the good far out weighed the bad.

The way the characters change over the course of the story is my favorite part of this book. I would say that there are four 'main' characters, Kitty, Venetia, Mrs. Tilling, and Edwina Paltry. Three of those four go through significant growth over the course of the story and that more than anything is what drives the story.

Kitty, who is 13 and the daughter of the Brigadier, really grows up through the year the book covers. She goes from being jealous of her older sister (Venetia) to realizing that she can be special on her own. She is loyal and honest and desperate to prove that she is just as good as Venetia, whom everyone seems to love, and I think she comes to realize that she doesn't have to prove that she's important to anyone, she just has to start believing in herself. Her relationship with Venetia really changes as Kitty comes to believe in herself and Venetia becomes less self-centered.

Venetia is my favorite character and she probably changes the most though the story. Her story is a sad one, and I will admit I was surprised that I was as okay as I was with what happened to her. When we first encounter her she's pretty self-centered, obnoxious, your basic beautiful 18 year-old who thinks she owns the world. She manages to seduce a painter who has recently moved to town and finds herself deeply in love. I have to admit, the love story was a bit hard to believe since even Venetia herself admits she knows absolutely nothing about him and he refuses to tell her even the smallest things about himself. I had to over look the holes in the love story to keep reading but it was worth it. Anyway, Venetia ends up pregnant and before she can tell her lover he disappears, leaving her thinking the worst; he's either dead after an air raid or run off as a Nazi spy. Venetia agrees to marry in order to cover up her indiscretion, but her fiance finds out about her condition and, well, lets just say he's not happy and he lets her know.

Venetia ends up miscarrying. However, with the tone of the book, and everything that happens, it's not unexpected. From pretty early on in her pregnancy I got the feeling it was going in that direction, so when it happened I was not shocked. It wasn't the slap in the face that the miscarriage was in another book I read recently, and i feel like it was a big part of her growth. The realization that her actions can have severe consequences, and that she's not invincible, bad things can happen to her, really contributed to her change in attitude. Not that I think she deserved it, by any means. No one deserves that, but it definitely changed her.

Mrs. Tilling's change was more subtle. She starts the story out quiet and meek, and ends by really coming into her own. She learns that her voice is important and that she has a lot to contribute to the village. I love how things end up for her. I don't want to spoil her story by saying too much about her but I really liked her.

I loved the attitude of all the women in the village of 'keeping calm and carrying on' and 'stiff upper lip' and all that. They really come together and keep going in the face of all their husbands and sons being gone for the war. I was really disappointed that we didn't get to find out what happened to Mrs. Tilling's son. David. Once he leaves for the war we never hear from him again and at the end of the book it's not even 1941 yet and the war is still going strong.

This was a good, intriguing read, with great characters who really made it successful for me. 3.75 out of 5 stars.

I received a free copy of this book in return for an honest review.

This was an enjoyable read that lived up to its reputation of being inspiring and uplifting. It is told from the perspective of many people in the village, through a medium of journals and letters and announcements. I quite liked that the author chose to do it this way rather than having a single narrator; it produced such a well-rounded story with a great deal of depth and charm. The author introduces us to a whole host of characters, each unique and equipped with different skills to deal with the changes that are happening in their lives because of the war. Each character was beautifully created with a perfect balance of skills and imperfections; it was a delight to watch them grow and change throughout the course of the novel and its events. Spoiled children mature and become selfless, righteous women learn to let go of prejudices, and ugly personalities reveal themselves. Each character has their own little subplot going on, and yet the author manages to tie everything together beautifully - and I can imagine that this must have been a very difficult task to orchestrate! The effect was wonderful, with a poignant, cohesive, charming story emerging. If my previous remarks haven't been obvious enough, this novel is a character-driven story and it is done remarkably well. At various different time points, I felt a kinship with almost all of the characters. This is definitely one of my favorite books on WWII, and it shows the strength that women can have in uniting a community, facing their own internal fears, and being a source of comfort to those around them during times of distress.

This book was a "reward" for filling out some survey. I had no intention of reading it - it was for my wife. Unfortunately, she does not review books, so I cannot award the book any sort of evaluation.

I received an ARC of The Chilbury Ladies' Choir from NetGalley. Being a musician, as well as a person who penpals, I thought that the whole concept of the women's choir and learning about the lives of the individual women in this village would really appeal to me. This book did not disappoint. I looked forward to reading it every night. I would recommend it.

This is a charming novel about an English village in 1940. It might not be the best of the books of this genre but it's pretty darn good. I liked the way the story of each of the characters unfolded- it made for a read that I knew might and did hold some surprises. There's no great highs here nor deep lows but it's a measured, gentle tale that's just right for, let's face it, fans of PBS series like Call the Midwife and Home Fires. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Ryan is one to watch.

Set in 1940's war torn England, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir tells the tale of the women who are left behind when the men go off to join the war effort. This is simply a beautiful read, showing the lives of these different women and girls through letters and diary entries.

The setting of the small English town was perfectly created. The characters were superbly written. Each one had a unique voice and tale. Jennifer Ryan managed to weave all the character's tales together in a way that flowed perfectly.

The heartbreak from the cost of war is balanced out by the determination that the Ladies of Chilbury show to carry on. The characters draw you in and make you feel everything that they do. From young Silvie, who has fled from the Nazis in Czechoslovakia, to Mrs Tilling who is trying to cope with her son being sent to war, their struggles and their voices spring off the page.

The story has a little bit of everything. There are quite a few dramatic story lines, however they work.

My only issue is that the diary entries and letters had too much dialogue to be genuine. This is only a small thing that I noticed after I'd finished reading the book. To actually tell the story, the dialogue between characters was needed so it could not really have been done any other way.

Overall, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir is a touching story that I'd highly recommend.

4.5/5 Stars

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced digital copy of this book in return for a review.

The way the story was presented was very imaginative and once all the characters were sorted and identified, it was enjoyable! All the characters, while tellting approximately the same story, had different points of view and made the story as a whole very entertaining.

All the men have gone from Chilbury, so the church choir has been abandoned. But, wait, women can sing, and sing quite well, without men! A newcomer to the village is a choir director and music teacher and helps reorganize the choir for just the women's voices. Thus, the varied women are drawn together to support each other as the war comes closer to them. The husbands, fathers, and sons have gone and the Nazi bombing is getting closer.

VERY enjoyable read. I would like to know what happens after the war!

Captivating WWII historical fiction told through letters and journal entries. Romance, mystery, deception and song in the small English village of Chilbury at the onset of WWII. This warm and captivating story pulls the reader into the lives of the ladies of Chilbury as they take on new roles and test old conventions. A heartwarming tale recommended to those who enjoyed The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The Summer Before The War.

After I requested a review copy of this book, I began to see it reviewed on a number of ‘must read’ lists. I was excited that I was going to be able to read and review the book. But admittedly it took me quite a long time to get though it since it did not immediately draw me in. The presentation of letters, journals, etc. confused me at first. And then when there were conversations in quotes in the journals and words in Kitty’s journal that I felt were beyond the scope of a thirteen-year old’s vocabulary, I became even more confused. I do not write my letters that way. Oh and I also know that it isn’t good to misspell words in a book. But I am sure that some of the words in Kitty’s journal would have been misspelled, if she used them at all. I did have the desire to wash out Ms. Paltry’s mouth when she used the “GD” word. It just means there are many of my friends I cannot recommend this book for reading.
The village was quaint. There were vivid pictures of the tragedy of war and what it did to the women who were waiting at home. England and especially the southern part was much closer to the action than most. The book did provide some clear descriptions of what might have happened. And it also described what may have been done to cope with it all such as the concerts that the choir held. It was strange to me that they really felt as if they could not sing without men. But then that was a different time.
There were some subtle twists in the books that did take it beyond the romance area, not my favorite genre. But there wasn’t really enough to hold my attention for long. It might have helped if there had been at least one perspective from a man’s point of view—perhaps the Colonel. As always there were a few stories left dangling but I am not sure I care enough to even think of reading a sequel. I received this book in exchange for an honest review.

I began this book thinking I was going to leave a wholly negative review. The book is comprised of a series of letters, diary entries and newspaper clippings. This isn't a particularly novel approach to this time period and initially I couldn't see what this approach added to the experience and to the story. But Ryan explains in her acknowledgements about how people in wartime were encouraged to write journals and the like, and in fact, upon reflection, the letters help to set the time period as this would have been how people communicated, particularly in such a small village.

I also began this book thinking it would be a Call the Midwife-esque story line where yes bad things happen but in the end everyone learns something and there's a happy ending. To some extent that is true, but, without spoiling anything, there are moments far more heart wrenching than that. Though the writing style is on occasion a bit clunky, failing to capture the distinct voices of the wide range of characters that make up a small English village, nonetheless Ryan manages to craft a series of intriguing and delectable personal stories, all of which are totally believable in the context of Britain in the Second World War. Yes, some of them could come across a little far fetched if this were just a novel about an English country village, but the context of the beginning of war and the very real threat of German invasion which was felt keenly at that time make the heightened drama and emotions all the more plausible.

I laughed, I shook my head in disbelief, I gasped in shock, I bawled like a baby and I found myself strangely uplifted by this story of the resilience of women who found themselves suddenly without the men whom they loved and on whom they depended. The journey of realised potential in several of the characters is expertly done, their development is not so subtle that it is almost nonexistent, nor is it so obvious as to feel forced.

My critique of this book, other than the occasional lack of narrative voice, is that it takes a bit of time to really get into the action. I appreciate the need for scene setting but I think I needed to understand the importance of the location to the war effort to really appreciate why Chilbury was simultaneously a small English village and an important military location. The other thing I felt wasn't taken into consideration was faith, so much of the important moments in this story take place in a church and this was a time in which the faith of people in Britain was arguably quite strong. I can understand why an author might not choose to make faith an important aspect, but I didn't feel that it was given the place in society that it ought to have had.

My rating: 3.5-4 stars



I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for an honest review.