An interesting book, not exactly gripping but a very well written slow burner that kept me reading. I enjoyed the flashbacks to Ellen's childhood that really gave an insight into how and why Ellen became who she did. Spanning the whole of the 20th century gave this book such authenticity.

I really enjoyed this book and stayed up half the night to finish it in one sitting. Other reviewers have told the story (some at length), so I will just comment. The setting during the war was atmospheric and so was Ella's early life. The male characters in Ella's life were all supportive and kindly - maybe a little friction would have been more realistic. The jump between 1974 and 2010 was too great, I felt, but made for maximum poignancy. However, I thought it was beautifully written, unusual and very, very emotional.
(There are capital letters missing for I and some names, and the speech is not punctuated correctly, which irritated a little, but presumably these will be corrected before publication.)

Set in a fictional village near Southampton (Southampton beingca real place) this story starts during WW2 in 1840 when Ellen finds a young girl four or five years old called Pamela on the back seats of a bus carrying passengers from Southampton who are escaping from a very heavy air raid over there homes that had been going on for some time now, days not hours
Pamela was out on the bus but some Ladies who were so scared for their lives they thought wrongly was on the previous bus carrying another full load of worried passengers. Ellen ended up having to take her home where she already 3 boys who are already being sheltered at their house she shared with her husbands Selwyn and by chance it was their first wedding anniversary and what an anniversary to remember but maybe not as they would have hoped for.
Obviously life was very different in 1940 to what these people were used to and hopefully something that none of us have or will experience but everybody seem to pull together community really was community not everybody out for themselves which so often happens nowadays. But off the soapbox and back to this story sitting in the round the village of Upton with so many wonderful characters existed and in this novel. They are very believable and the detail of life for them at this time is proof that Frances's has done the research and knows the times.
I love this book from page one and really was glued to it to the very end and I hope that you enjoy it too. I love the fact that we get to see the lives of these people and how it was affected not just by the War but by the years afterwards as they recovered and had to learn to live again in post-war Britain. There are secrets that get revealed as you read through the book and most any make sense with what you've read before as you'd expect from any good author. It's a story you have to read as it's written and one you can't take a sneak look at the end because it really won't make any sense, I loved that as well, but what's not to love if you want to simple chill with a good book, be entertained and educated at the same time then be brave and buy this book, after all we must be brave but don't worry you don't have to be to read this book and i do highly recommend it to you.

Thank you net galley for the opportunity to review this book.

A really interesting story, wound around the question, what does it mean to love a child? Childless Ellen has little reason to expect that she will be able to give a child the love she needs, at the moment that it is desperately needed. Despite her own childhood experiences, for three years she makes this child the centre of her world, only to see her torn away. How she deals, bravely, with the loss this child is the heart of this story.

The details of a poverty stricken childhood, Dickensian in detail of cold and hunger, and the way in which Ellen fights against this, with the help of her friends, are compelling, as are the descriptions of war time rural life. An excellent read.

A captivating, epic saga of wartime and its aftermath, of love and loss and unfulfilled dreams, and of how relationships can restore our hope and faith in the human spirit to endure all things. Centering on the domestic and infinitesimal, this book also spans the depth of the human heart and the universal.

Few things clutch at our emotions like an abandoned child, which is where this story starts. Caught up in an air raid, chaos ensues and a young girl gets separated from her mother. She is discovered by Ellen on a bus after all the other passengers have disembarked.

Having no idea of her identity at first or where Pamela's parents might be, Ellen seeks to protect her from harm and takes her into her home, where other refugees are also being temporarily housed. Much to her surprise, and despite her husband's initial disapproval, she soon develops a close and loving attachment to the lost child.

Their adaptation isn't without problems and Ellen does all in her power to find Pamela’s parents. A brief period of bliss occurs before she discovers that Pamela's mother died in the Southampton bombing and her absent father, who had been actively searching for her, wants to take her away to live with relatives in Ireland.

In the interests of protecting Pamela from future distress and helping her to settle in with her cousins, a decision is reached to cut off all contact with Ellen and Selwyn. This devastating news causes Ellen to correspond privately with Pamela instead, penning letters that never get sent.

Life goes on but Ellen never forgets this child of her heart, who she considers to be her own. Will Ellen and Pamela fully recover from their enforced separation? Will they forget one another? Will they ever meet up again? The author manages to resolve these questions satisfactorily with tenderness and grace. A beautiful book I absolutely loved and hated coming to the end of.

We must be brave by Frances Liardet is set in the Second world war in the 1940. This is a story of Love and loss and sacrifice for the main character Ellen.
It’s 1940 in a small town called Upton near Southampton. A bus load of survivors, turn up fleeing the bombing raids. When everyone gets off the bus a little girl (Pamela) is left sleeping on the bus. Ellen Parr takes her in, trying to find out where her mother is. At the same time, Ellen who has newly married and decided not to have kids, starts to have doubts, and wants to adopt Pamela when they find out that her mother has died in the bombing raids. Life is sweet and they both form a bond. Even though Ellen’s husband Selwyn has warned her not to get too close. One day Pamela’s father turns up and takes her away to Ireland. Ellen is heartbroken and the book then describes on how she deals with that.
I love books about the war, the rationing and how people get together in times of need. I really enjoyed the first half of this story and I thought it was beautifully written but, for me I was disappointed with the second part. It was far too long and the author just kept repeating the same thing over and over again, which seemed unnecessary. The story was just about Ellen. I would like more of the background in the other characters. Because of this, I skimmed read the last part of the book. Three stars from me.

There was a lot of description towards the time period, clothing and lifestyles the characters which interested me. Every description was very rich and you really get an image from what you read.

I thought the first third or so of the book was interesting, but the switch between timelines was a bit off-putting. While it turned out to not be my cup of tea exactly, i'm sure if you like a slower paced story that's rich in detail you would enjoy this.

This book dealt with love, loss and sacrifice spanning most of the twentieth century. The book begins with a bus full of refugees from the bombing in Southampton being brought to the small village of Upton approximately 20 miles away, where Ellen, the wife of the miller, finds a little girl asleep on the back seat of the bus with no one claiming her or admitting that they knew anything about her. Ellen falls for the little girl, Pamela and decides that she will foster her. Eventually, following discoveries about the child's mother, her father turns up three years later determined to take her and send her to live in Ireland with his sister and Pamela's cousins. From the loss of Pamela, which Ellen feels keenly, the story looks at Ellen's own childhood and the losses she suffered then, together with events which follow many years later when Ellen makes a connection with another young girl, Penny.

The complex situations and the depth of characters made this a very enjoyable read, and I ended the book with a few tears, I have to admit!

I was given a copy of this book via Netgalley on behalf of Harper Collins 4th Estate in exchange for an honest review.

Ellen has a harsh poverty-stricken upbringing, living cold and hungry with her mother, brought down by the actions of her father. With the death of her mother, Ellen is all alone. She meets Selwyn Parr, a local miller, damaged from the Great War, and they fall into a life full of love.

With the bombing of Southampton in WW2, Pamela, a lost child, enters their lives and becomes the daughter they could never have. Seemingly destined for sadness, Pamela's departure shapes the rest of Ellen's life.

Beautifully crafted, heartbreaking, sad, yet so full of love, We Must Be Brave is a book to remember, full of characters to care about, and vivid descriptions of the rural community of Upton, Highly recommended.

A charming story beautifully told. It is a story set in World War 2 but does cover a big time span. Well rounded characters who have a heart warming tale to tell. Not the usual run of the mill war story, taking an interesting angle of what it means to love a child. Well worth a read

I just loved this book. I don’t normally read this type of book but it was so beautifully written and such a sweeping story. It was so lovely to read about someone being kind and selfless in this cynical world. The characters pulled the reader in from the beginning and were very real and the feeling of sadness but just getting on with was a theme throughout without being maudlin.. What struck me at the beginning was the thought that for all its faults thank goodness for the benefit system in this country!

Wow! Cracking read, fast paced, loads of twists and turns.
Ellen's life is no easy ride, with so much lose, heartbreak, struggle all intercepted with love, which is ripped away from her in various ways.
The story is so moving.

I was on the verge of tears for about the last third of the book - the characters got me deep, and I was utterly engrossed in the story.

Thanks to netgalley for an early copy in return for an honest review
Some great characters in this book but found my self drowning at times a lot of waffling not quite how I imagined this book to be but saying all that an ok read.

Ellen lives outside Southampton in a rural village. She is housing 3 refugee boys from London when a busload of people fleeing a raid in Southampton, arrive. At the back of the bus a lone 5 year old is found sleeping under a blanket. Urged aboard by some women who thought her mother already boarded, she is now lost. Ellen takes her home, hopefully to reunite her with her mother when the raid is over.

This wasn't my usual 'wartime' reading - it was primarily about a mother's love for a child, relationships, love and loss. The war seemed to be going on in the background, setting some scenes and usually spoken of in terms of evacuation and food shortages and some personal injuries to some of the characters. (Maybe that was the experience of some ordinary people, who may not have been more interested in the politics).

I started reading with the impression that this was a sort of light family saga featuring WRVS teas and 'make do and mend' ladies, which didn't really engage me; but after the first quarter, I'm glad I persevered. My interest was raised from the description of Ellen's childhood and upbringing. It moved to a personal, emotional account of abject poverty, despair and loneliness. I still found the local community a bit 'twee', and the war, distant.

The loss to local villages from the effects of both world wars is both sobering and humanised, saving the book from purely personal, emotional stuff. The absolute yearning of a woman for ‘her’ child is felt as a primeval force through the book. There are surprises and twists (not entirely unguessed) along the way, but it does feel a bit strange the way the time scale zooms off in the post war period. Entertaining enough, but it did not envelop me.

Loved, loved loved the first half of this book. The best summary is “Light between oceans” seton the UK in WW2. Young girl is found asleep on the back of a bus with evacuees from the city, but without a parent. Ellen and her husband look after her until the mother or family can be traced, but Pamela’s mum has been killed in the bombings and there is no other family to care for her.

Ellen and her husband have no children of their own and both have their own tales to tell.... but they take Pamela completely in to their hearts,,, until one day there is word that she may have family after all.

Didn’t feel the second half lived up to the first and felt it lost its way a bit, but a good solid ending.

This is not your usual WW2 story it is about loss and grief and secrets and how chance encounters can change everything.

I found it a bit of struggle in the mid section of the book. There is lots of this book that really could have been edited down, page after page of descriptions of encounters between the characters, some of which are central to the story and some of which just seem to be passing the time. I did find myself skipping some of these piece to get to the bits where I felt the story was being told. However the characters in this book are so well fleshed out that you really do feel like you know them, can picture them and relate to them.

Despite struggling with the writing style and lack of chapter breaks and jumping through parts of the book it definitely captured me and I will admit that I sobbed through the last little of the book which I feel was meant to be a happy ending but for me I just felt like what a terrible waste of their lives that they totally could have shared but which neither woman was ultimately brave enough to find the other. I spent the whole 2nd half of the book hoping and waiting for Pamela to come back, by the time she did it was not quite too late but almost which absolutely broke my heart and as the book went on I become more and more frustrated at Ellen's lack of action to find Pamela.

So in summary, this is a great story, really it is, but the writing style makes for tough reading and it definitely drags in places. I feel like it could do with a good edit so that it flows a bit better and you are wading through pages and pages trying to find the bits where something actually happens.

An interesting viewpoint of the effects of war on one woman, it was an emotional read although I found it quite long and could have enjoyed a bit more to the story.

Thank for the review copy

We Must Be Brave was a book that I received from NetGalley and I had been on a real historical fiction push so this seemed to be the perfect fit for my reading but for some reason it just didn’t grab my attention. I actually really struggled with reading through this and I even took a break halfway through reading it which I never do. I think I said in one of the previous posts that I don’t like reading too many books at the same time. I don’t know what it was about this book, but I just wasn’t reaching for it.

I think one of the problems with We Must Be Brave and I know that this won’t be an issue with the final book but for me it was a huge distraction was the bad formatting in the e-book. I think it really impacted my reading experience and I know that I should look past it to the actual story but I found it really difficult, especially discerning what were people’s names and places.

We Must Be Brave had a unique perspective that I really loved, the people involved weren’t necessarily in the direct line of the war, but they were impacted just the same. I loved the insight into the way that everything worked and what the fears ended up being outside of the obvious air raids, including invasion and rationing. I thought the fact that there was no obvious threat that it made the telling of the story all the better.

I did think that the ending was a little bit rushed I loved the concept but I would have loved for there to have been a little more development and I thought the main events in her life were kind off brushed over. I would have liked to see a little more emotion, especially as we had seen so much previously. It almost felt like the entire of the second half of We Must Be Brave was an afterthought and filler until we got to the end.

I loved the relationship that was built between Pamela and Ellen, for once I thought it was a completely realistic, especially with the tantrums and the fact that it wasn’t all perfect from the beginning. Plus it was great to see a child actually deal with grief instead of just being overwhelmingly grateful for being taken in. I thought that We Must Be Brave dealt with this instance perfectly.

I think even with my issues with We Must Be Brave I would still recommend it. I loved the way the book ended and I also thought the insight into living through the war was extremely well done. Something I was really interested in.

This is not for me.

Although I did love the whimsical, compelling narrative of this book, it kept me going when I was horrifically bored, but the plot - or execution - wasn't there for me.

This was described to me as an emotional book, a tale about love and loss in the second world war; however I really struggled to distinguish the love in this book from perpetuated self entitlement.

I didn't like the main character, Ellen. I thought that she felt like because she took in what she thought was a motherless, estranged child called Pamela into her home, she was permitted to keep her forever, even going as far as begrudging her father from reuniting with Pamela. Ellen was consistently selfish, and then would help out the odd villager and would be overly praised, with no one calling her out on her selfishness.

Not only that, but the second half of this book is basically about Ellen replacing Pamela with another little girl called Penny who has the same initials and a similar nature to Pamela, and yet Ellen constantly reminisces about Pamela, so there is no emotional investment or connection made with Penny. Within the story it felt to me ridiculously repetitive and tired.

Once again, Ellen feels entitled to Penny, foregoing any kind of character development that could have been made on Ellen's behalf.

I think this book would have been better if it was more focused on families reuniting during the savage destruction of the second world war. Rather than one woman's need to keep a child from ever leaving her, and then replacing her with a similar child when the original child's father is quite rightly insisting she be with her own family again.

Overall, great, knowledgeable, inspiring writing, rife with facts, tragedies, emotions and atmosphere of life in England during the second world war. I can imagine the nostalgia, even though I'm only 23. Poor plot, no substantial developments of characters, no progress made with the actual story itself, extremely repetitive which ruins any kind of impact the prose could have had.

Emoji review/my face during the entirety of this novel: 😕

Thank you to Net Galley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.