With harvest approaching, land girl Daphne is busier than ever as she ploughs the fields and tends to the animals with her friends Sal and Charlie. All three girls enjoy the relative peace of Goodwill House…but war is never far away.
When a German plane crash lands in the grounds of Goodwill House, everyone is shocked, especially when the two German pilots are declared missing. Where could they be hiding?
Tensions are high, and Daphne is dealt yet another shock, when she meets Corporal Robert Andrews – the man she was once engaged to marry! Goodwill House is the last place she expected to be reunited with Bob and although he looks dashing in his uniform, Daphne doesn’t think she can ever forgive him for breaking her heart.
With the war getting closer every day, can these two to finally be reunited for good or will their love be forever lost…?
A Wartime Reunion at Goodwill House (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Audible) is the fifth book in the Goodwill House series. I previously had the pleasure of reading two other books in the series and the reviews can be found here:
The War Girls of Goodwill House (Amazon) and New Recruits at Goodwill House (Free on Amazon Prime Reading) are the previous books in the series.
You don’t have to have read the first three volumes to find a charming story. According to author Fenella J. Miller “My Goodwill House series can be read as stand-alone books or in chronological order. Lady Joanna Harcourt, widowed at Dunkirk, features in every story. However, running alongside her life there is always a romance which, of course, has the essential happy-ever-after ending.” The books themselves are fairly inexpensive, and if you enjoy historical fiction with a little romance, you can’t go wrong.
Land Girl Daphne takes center stage in this volume. Jilted a year before by her betrothed, Bob, she gets assigned to Goodwill House which is near the Manston airfield. Unbeknownst to her, Bob has been assigned to the facility. The reason Bob broke up with Daphne is because they looked so much alike and, being adopted, he feared they might actually be half brother and sister. You see, Daphne revealed to him that her dad had an affair and neither could be sure if the woman wasn’t Bob’s birth mother. Naturally, Bob ends up at Goodwill House and the two vow to get to the bottom of the mystery of Bob’s birth in order to settle their feelings.
Joanna is receiving some attention from the new Lord Harcourt, the third cousin of her husband, who died at Dunkirk. But she is coming off a passionate affair with a young officer that was featured in the previous book. And it turns out Peter might not be the rightful heir to the title when a woman comes forward and says her husband, seriously injured at Dunkirk, is the rightful heir as he is a second cousin. The man had previously been reported as dead, which makes the whole situation suspicious.
As I’ve read the series, I’ve very much enjoyed the attention to historical detail in the books, As with The Little Wartime Library by Kate Thompson, there’s mention of people living in the tubes after the Blitz, and the Land Girls do real work on a local farm. German planes get into fire fights over the area and several people are shot by the bad guys, including Charlie, whom we met in the previous book. Bringing a huge dose of World War II reality into a historical romance is not an easy thing to do, but Miller does it well. I hope this series continues for a while and imagine it will. Not even a full year has gone by since the first book started January 1, 1940.
I received and Advanced Reader’s Copy from NetGalley and Boldwood Books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
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