This book is the fourth and final in the Emmy Lake chronicles that began with Dear Mrs Bird. It’s a series I love and, to the uninitiated, concerns Emmy Lake who works at a woman’s magazine in London during the Second World War. So far, so cosy, you might think, but these books, though charming, are not the nostalgia fest that can come with talking about the war. Lord knows, there’s been some guff spouted by politicians about this in recent years, as if the war was a great time that we should all hark back to.
These books show us more. They demonstrate what a difficult dark time it was, the destruction and death and fear. I’m still traumatised by something that happened at the end of the third book so I picked up the fourth knowing that there was bound to be something upsetting within.
It all starts well. Emmy is working incredibly hard at Woman’s Friend magazine and finally getting her chance to be a war correspondent. Her husband Charles is posted in London, her friend Bunty is happy and engaged to be married and they all manage a few days in the countryside. However, the darkest days of the war are still to come and the good days at the beginning of the book cannot last. The nation is struggling, the war seems never to end and all the calls for one last push seem harder than ever.
This book has a personal resonance for me. Because over the course of the books, we’ve seen Emmy fall in love and get married to Charles, and before long in this book, he is sent off to fight, gets captured and sent to a POW camp. While trying very hard to avoid spoilers, this happened to my grandpa Phil too and what happens to Charles in the book, also happened to Phil.
Grandpa didn’t speak about the war for a long time but closer to the end, he tried to write a book using his diaries from the war. There is a single book that I know of that covers the history of his story and those of other POWs, and he would have been thrilled to know that they now feature in a novel. The acknowledgement and the awareness of this part of the war, little known, would have given him real pride and frankly, I’m only sorry I wasn’t able to do it myself. Perhaps there’s still time to do something else.
This has enough of the frantic storylines and crazy making do that characterises the other books, and the pages are full of love and friendship. In short, it’s a lovely end to the series and I shall miss Emmy and Bunty immensely.
I received a review copy via Netgalley but have a signed copy of the hardback on its way.
Dear Miss Lake is available on 3 July 2025 from Pan Macmillan.
Susan E Barsby 