"The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

The year is 1946, and England is trying to recover from the travesties of wartime. Writer Juliet Ashton is trying to figure out what to write about next when she receives a letter from the island of Guernsey, from a man who found her name written inside a book. From there, Juliet and several islanders form a relationship through letters where Juliet is inspired to possibly write a book about her correspondents, a group who calls themselves the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. As the letters progress, Juliet grows close to the natives of Guernsey, and learns more than she thought she would about how the literary society endured through World War 2.

I first tried this story on CD, and it did not work for me at all. So I switched to the print version and I was able to get through it a little better. The writing is very clunky and unnatural and is inconsistent with the different characters. All of the characters seem to write letters in the same way. Still, I liked the historical aspect of the story, showing how Europeans dealt with German occupation. The grittier, work-camp parts were not too graphic, but still painted a good enough description to give the story some differentiation of levels. I didn’t really like this book, but I know many people do, and I feel this would be a good selection for book clubs and fans of “historical-lite” fiction.