October 15, 2014
The latest period romance from Scottish author Douglas (Dreams to Sell, 2014) is set in Edinburgh at the start of WWII. Jinny, the youngest of three pretty sisters who live with their father, works in accounts for a chain of city bakeries. When the owner's nephew, Viktor, arrives from Austria to apprentice at the bakery, the two strike up a romance. But when the Austrian army joins Hitler's forces, Viktor returns home and is conscripted. Jinny is heartbroken but throws herself into the British women's service along with her sisters. She also finds new romance with another bakery employee, Ross, though they live with the specter of Ross being sent to the front and Viktor returning. The story shares many hallmarks with Douglas' previous novelsa working-class heroine, love triangle, and wartime settingand like its predecessors, it avoids the suspenseful tension its circumstances seem to indicate and offers, instead, safe and pleasant diversion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)