This was all warm & fuzzy. Lovely little romance. It’s like 84 chasing cross road meets pride & prejudice. Delightful ( )

The book involves a number of people who lived on the island of Guernsey during WW II. The book is far from a war story, but more about how neighbors came to form a literary society during the Nazi occupation of their island. The story is told via letters exchanged between the characters in the book. It reminded me of having your favorite aunt from the country visit and telling you stories of her friends and neighbors from the past. Some stories you may focus on, others you may gloss over, but it really doesn't affect the outcome. ( )

London-based author Juliet Ashton begins a chance correspondence with a man from the isle of Guernsey, who happened to come into possession of one of her personal books. From her acquaintance with him blossoms a friendship with several other community members from his book club dubbed "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society." Inspired by their stories of the German occupation of their island, Juliet decides to visit them to do research for a book she plans on writing.

This book is told almost entirely in letters (with a brief section pulled from one character's diary), which is a bold move. I love epistolary novels when done well. My first impression of this novel was that many of the voices sounded the same. With this re-read, I listened to the audiobook, which is narrated by a number of different actors, helping to make the voices sound distinct (both literally and figuratively). However, I still felt there were places where the epistolary style failed. For instance, there were times when the authors very much felt they had to "tell" the reader rather than show (e.g., lengthy facts from Juliet about the size of Guernsey, the population, the governance, etc.). There were other times when the authors decided not to show one end of a letter conversation, which I just found an odd choice myself, although I guess cuts must be made somewhere to keep the novel manageable. And there was the aforementioned instance of having to dip into a diary to move the narrative along.

It's hard to describe this book because on the one hand it can feel rather light -- it's an undemanding and quick read; there's an easy-to-spot love triangle that resolves itself without much fuss; and the characters are rather one note (one is even arguably a "Mary Sue" type character). On the other hand, the book is informative about the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands and is rather bleak and upsetting when describing such events from World War II as separating children from their parents, the bombings in London, prisoner of war camps, etc. Overall, the end feeling is one of optimism and hope for the future, but there are still enough darker parts to keep this book from being called light-hearted.

That all being said, this was a very popular book when it came out and it seems to be flying off the shelves again with the upcoming movie based on it. It will likely appeal most to fans of historical fiction and book club members. ( )

Interesting read but glad I chose the audio edition. The narrator's really made this easy to listen to. The format is a bit strange as the book is mostly read through correspondence of the characters. ( )

I listened to the audio book and I liked that it was read by so many different people. It helped build them in my mind. I laughed, I cried, I was taken on a ride that I will definitely be going on again!