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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A women's war story, the true heroes,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: War Brides (Paperback)
This is a unique story of Australian women who by chance meeteligible and vulnerable American service men while the men arestationed in Australia during WWII. Each couple meet and hastily march to marriage encouraged and motivated by the events and times at the end of the war. Despite family members expressing objection, the story centers on 3 young women who take the plunge and board ship for America to start their lives with the husbands they only knew for the briefest time. Each of the women are different and what motivates their destiny becomes the essence of the story line. One must remember that during this time in women's history, a wife was expected to place their husband first, no matter the personal sacrifice. For all these women, the sacrifices are so costly, they are each pushed to the edge and are challenged in a foreign country to make the best of their situation. A somewhat slow novel in the beginning, the story developes and holds the reader to the end.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The dream is never like the reality...,
By
This review is from: War Brides (Paperback)
Following the end of WWII, three young Australian women meet en route to America, where they plan to join the American soldiers they've just married...
At 19, Sheila is the most naive and idealistic. The only child of fairly well-to-do parents, she's used to getting her own way. She has no idea about American geography, but she has a vague idea that the backwoods Virginia home of her husband Billy is somewhere near New York... Dawn, who already lost one young husband due to the war, wanted to remarry in order to provide her little girl Faye with a father. Immediately pregnant with another child, she quickly learns that life with a career Army officer like Zac isn't exactly the picturesque cozy family she had pictured... And Gaynor - the product of a shiftless, alcoholic mother's random liaisons - has grown up in poverty and neglect, vowing to better herself regardless of what it took. When young Ricky, stationed in Australia, immediately fell in love with Gaynor's beauty, she took advantage of his naivete and married into the Cunningham family money. She never imagined, however, to become so smitten with his suave father Richard... The book follows the three women's lives throughout the next decade, taking them through happy and unhappy marriages, pregnancies, child-rearing, homesickness for Australia and various pivotal life decisions as they struggle to achieve what they've always considered "The American Dream." But, as Sheila, Dawn and Gaynor each come to realize, a dream is never like reality... Battle's portrayal of post-WWII life is realistic and engaging, providing readers with a real literary treat.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
What happened to the ending?,
By "bhebert" (Walpole, NH USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: War Brides (Paperback)
A Major Disappointment! This is one of the "slowest" reads I've had in a long time. It felt like labor just to get through it. I kept putting it down to read other books that were much more interesting, so it took me five weeks to finish. I kept plugging away, because there would be a hint that it would pick up and get better, but it would slow back down again. It finally ended leaving me confused as to what happened to one of the main characters!I wanted to read this book because of the subject matter... foreign women who married American GI's after WWII and immigrated to the USA. This story was written by the daughter of one such couple. It revolves around three women. But I found that the lack of dates at the beginning of chapters, or very little reference to time frames throughout the book as it jumped from character to character made the book hard to follow. For example, when it went back and forth between chapters on Dawn, it was hard to tell if one month or a year had gone by. Then at the end, it was almost as if the author realized the book was too long, or got tired of writing, and just decided to stop! We never learn what really happened to Gaynor. I think this book would have been much more effective if the author had written about one character, even if it meant having a shorter book. Or written about three separate characters in three separate mini-books combined in one novel, but following that one character all the way through. Since these characters had very little interaction after the first chapter, that could have been the prologue and then had epilogue to wrap up any connections or to tell what happened to them later. Over all - I would not recommend this if you want to read anything "interesting" or "quick".... so boring!
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