My Rating ~ 3.5*

Yours Cheerfully by AJ Pearce will be published June 24th with Picador and is the second book featuring aspiring journalist Emmeline (Emmy) Lake. It is described as ‘every bit as funny, heart-warming, and touching as AJ Pearce’s debut, Dear Mrs Bird…..a celebration of friendship, a testament to the strength of women and the importance of lifting each other up, even in the most challenging times.' I haven’t read Dear Mrs Bird but I needn’t have worried as Yours Cheerfully provides a very rounded backstory, providing new readers with sufficient information to pick up where Dear Mrs Bird left Emmy Lake.

Set against the backdrop of the Second World War, Yours Cheerfully is a story about women and their fight to be acknowledged and respected. These brave and selfless women worked hard in the munitions factories covering varied shifts but for some it was just too much. As the Ministry of Information attempts to gather momentum with its recruitment drive of female workers, they call on the services of women’s magazines to assist them put the message out there.

Emmy Lake works for Woman’s Friend magazine and, following the departure of its agony aunt columnist, Mrs Bird, Emmy gets an opportunity to take on more responsibility. Emmy is excited but also very nervous. Her reputation hasn’t been the best in the past and now Emmy is ready to grab this second chance and become the journalist she always dreamed of being. Emmy gets an opportunity to visit one of the munitions factories and, although very much taken with the camaraderie of the women, she is shocked at the manner in which they are treated. These women are pulled in all directions and, while wanting to assist in the war effort as much as they can, they have become quite disillusioned by the expectations placed on them. Emmy soon finds herself back on dangerous territory. While wanting to do what is expected of her, she also sees the human side of the suffering these women shoulder and Emmy, never afraid to face a challenge, must decide how best to help, mindful of her new responsibilities as a trusted employee of Woman’s Friend.

Aside from her work for the magazine, Emmy also volunteers with the fire service. Loyalty and friendship are very important to Emmy, as is so very obvious in her relationship with her boyfriend Charles and childhood friend Bunty. Emmy very much believes that everyone needs to pull together, everyone must make sacrifices, including herself.

The women in the factories are paid less, expected to sort out childcare, run households and basically be available to work any shift over a 24-hour period. Emmy can see the strain this is having and her conscience plays with her. Can she really promote and encourage women to work in such an imbalanced environment? Can she, as a journalist, do more?

As Emmy grapples with these questions, and with the turn of events in her personal life, she has to dig deep and find the strength to be true to her own beliefs but also be mindful of the chaos descending on the world around her.

Yours Cheerfully is a very sweet and enjoyable read, with the indefatigable Emmy Lake a wonderful central character. Packed with plenty of feel-good and heart-warming moments, Yours Cheerfully is an uplifting story of courage and optimism during challenging times, something we can all relate to at the moment.

Sometimes you pick up a book at just the right time. I had heard that this is a lovely read, and it was firmly in my digital TBR. I started it over the beautifully sunny weekend, and ended up actually finishing it then too, it was so engaging.

This is the second in a series, which I hadn’t realised. Dear Mrs Bird is the first one, but I didn’t feel that I missed anything in the second. AJ Pearce does a great job at filling in and reminding a clueless reader without labouring the point. She also does a great job at encouraging me to add Dear Mrs Bird to my wishlist!

Emmy Lake is a journalist at Women’s Friend, in the middle of the Second World War. A bit like Small Pleasures in that both main characters are journalists in a predominantly man’s world, dealing with the aftermath of the war. They could be sisters, or colleagues, just twenty years apart.

It’s written in a tone which I’d describe as ‘jolly hockey sticks’, very Famous Five and it describes an England long gone, where the men wear braces and hats and the ladies stay at home to raise the babies. In fact, underneath that stiff British upper lip, we get to glimpse the hardship faced by Emmy and those around her, in the middle of a war which felt never ending, robbing the UK of a generation of men and the ‘luxury’ of buying what they need in terms of food and clothing. Something about this combination of valiant fighting and clear struggle, really fitted with me and I just loved it.

Emmy’s best friend, Bunty, is grieving the loss of her fiancé and dealing with trying to heal from surviving the bomb that killed him and razed their house to the ground. The friendship she and Emmy have is just lovely – pure and supportive and honest. Emmy’s parents too, are an idyllic representation of a loving couple, delighted that their daughter is pursuing her dream.

In the midst of getting to grips with a new role at the magazine, Emmy finds herself attending some very important meetings at the Ministry, much to the consternation of some ‘proper’ journalists. Women’s Friend is positioned in the book as very much a lifeline for women (although aimed at the older generation, truth be told), including recipes to use allotment vegetables, avoiding rationed items, saving yarn and patterns for knitting underwear.

I think the best books have characters you want to be friends with. Maybe not all of them – I wouldn’t love being friends with the narrator in Fight Club, although I’ll bet he’s fun to go on a night out with. I would definitely meet up with Emmy and Bunty, they’d be really fun with some gin and records, and they know how to make a little go a long way.

I’d recommend this if you like books set in this type of era, very much a kind of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, it reminded me of Dodie Smith’s I Capture The Castle.

Thanks as always to Netgalley and for the advance digital review copy – this is out to buy on June 24th 2021 in the UK.

I really enjoyed this sequel to 'Dear Mrs Bird', all of my favourite characters returned along with some new ones. You did not have to have read the previous book but it helped give context to relationships.

Emmeline Lake is still working at the 'Woman's Friend' magazine but this time she has much more responsibility in the renamed 'Cheerfully Yours' problem page. Set in 1941, the war is still raging, many women are now being conscripted to carry out war work as the men are away fighting. The problem page letters are really moving and give a lot more detail into what every day life was like for women of all ages and circumstances.

On the train to visit a munition's factory for a feature, Emmy meets a young woman and her family who shows them the real dilemmas working women face. It made me think about the comparisons between women today trying to juggle childcare and employment.

Emmy takes her role very seriously wanting to do her bit for the war effort and help those around her. She is such a loveable character along with the plucky Bunty. Yours cheerfully was a really comforting read, I really hope there will be another book.

Absolutely lovely, I'm really enjoying this series and I wish that it'd had more media attention. It's a wonderful and wholesome mixture of Stiff Upper Lip and Being A Good Person, the characters and the depiction of the very real struggle of working mothers stuck such a chord with me. It's fascinating that some much has changed and yet so little

I really loved "Dear Mrs Bird" and was delighted to have the opportunity to meet up with the characters again and find out what was happening in their lives. However, although the issue of working women was well explained and integrated into the story, I didn't feel as connected to the protagonists as in the first book and at times it felt, to me, that the story moved too slowly. I would definitely still read a third one though!
Thank you to netgalley and Pan Macmillan for an advance copy of this book

What a wonderful break this book was from all of the thrillers that I’ve been reading. This is a follow up to Dear Mrs. Bird, but honestly, I liked this one a lot more.
London, November 1941. It’s round two at Women’s Friend magazine and Mrs Henrietta Bird has moved on and so Emmeline Lake is assisting with the agony column renamed Yours Cheerfully.
Emmy is back (as well as Charles and Bunty) she is now working on the advice column named Yours Cheerfully. She is a strong character with a warmth to her.

A light, enjoyable book that focuses on the plight of the female factory workers. Emmy helps in the effort to recruit workers and do their part in the war effort. It was slow in parts, but overall easy reading.

The characters in this one were full of life and determination, in spite of the war raging on. They were smart, resourceful and sometimes unconventional and I thoroughly enjoyed them.
Despite the very serious issues tackled in this book, reading this feels like getting a warm hug from a loved one you haven't seen in a long time- you're sniffly and crying, but by the end of it, you're smiling through your tears and you're happy.
I highly recommend this, and I really wish AJ Pearce would continue this as a series, I don't want to think that's the last I've heard of these delightful characters!
Thank you to Pan Macmillan and Netgalley for an eARC of this book in return for an honest review.

Having devoured Dear Mrs Bird in a sitting, I was over the moon to be given the opportunity to review Yours Cheerfully - and even more delighted that the sequel is such a worthy successor.

This time around, Emmeline Lake and Woman’s Friend face a new challenge - how to recruit women workers to help with the war effort. But the issue isn’t as simple as Emmy first believes.

It’s often nerve-wracking to read the sequel to a book you loved, but with Yours Cheerfully, AJ Pearce delivers in every respect. The writing has that same quality that has you laughing out loud one moment and then all but moved to tears the next. It was wonderful to be back in Emmy’s world and to see the development in her relationships at work and at home. As before, Pearce brings the period to life, with research that is clearly thorough but never heavygoing, and a narrative that is warm and uplifting, but not twee or sugar-coated.

Comparisons to Call the Midwife are apt, because, like the series, the book manages to be an absolute tonic, whilst covering the hard-hitting issues of the day. In this case, the issues are still prevalent today - namely the struggle for many women in balancing work and childcare (where there are no workplace provisions for the latter) and the inbuilt discrimination against women at work to which many are blind.

In short, another masterclass in uplit from AJ Pearce. I loved this book and will definitely be shouting about it to anyone who’ll listen!

Loved it as much as Dear Mrs Bird. If you want to have a great time, uplifting characters and story. Look nowhere else.

Thanks a lot to NG and the publisher for this copy.

This book follows on from Dear Mrs Bird. I must stress you don't need to have read that, but it does help. The story is set in 1941 and Mrs Bird has now departed from Woman's Friend Magazine leaving Emmy wondering if her position is secure. Thankfully her editor has faith in her abilities and ropes her in when the government want help with a recruitment drive for women in the war work. As before, she gives it her all and gets involved with a group of women working in a munition factory in Berkshire. The blitz seems to be over and there is no so much emphasis on what is happening, other than the mention of the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941. The reader is aware of the scarcity of things and rationing, but the bombings aren't at the forefront of this story.
I liked this book as it's easy to read, but gives you a glow when you finish it.

What a beautiful, eye opening book, that really highlights how much we take for granted in modern day.

Yours Cheerfully jumps straight back in to where we left Emmy in the first book, Dear Mrs Bird (which is such a gorgeous book) and it was an absolute joy following her around as she ran articles for Women’s Friend magazine on women working during the Second World War.
The women in this book are all being encouraged to go out and work while their “beaus” are at war, and so many women did this as they felt it was their duty and a way of helping the men, doing so without any childcare assistance, and all the while, earning less than a man just because of their gender. The characters in the book were brave enough to talk about the inequality of it all, and I found it inspiring.

It really puts things into perspective for me and I think that women during this period must have been extremely strong and determined and I feel as though I owe them so much for their extreme bravery!!

@ajpearcewrites has absolutely crushed this as a sequel and I quite honestly loved every page of it as much as it’s predecessor!!

It was a sheer delight to read and I love, love, LOVED IT!!

It was so wonderful to revisit the world of Emmy Lake and Woman's Friend. I think I enjoyed this one even more than Dear Mrs Bird. A wonderful cast of characters all dealing with life on the Home Front and a country at war. It is filled with humour and tinges of sadness but left me feeling very uplifted by the end. I feel see to actually finish reading.

An enjoyable feel-good read with some weighty themes set in middle of World War 2, this is a great follow up to “Dear Mrs Bird”.  Again this book balances the horror of the time period with the “just get on with it” mentality, following again Emmy and her motley crew of buddies with their well-drawn personalities and voices. This would be great on audiobook! The story champions the women left behind, especially those who went out to work on the Home Front, focusing on munitions factory workers and the depth of research really pays off, as it rings true throughout. Like a 1940’s screwball comedy, the reader is always wondering - what scrape will Emmy get into next? With her sparky and eternally loyal nature, Emmy is a character to root for and one you would always want in your corner. Despite being a bit slow in the middle, this is well worth sticking with for a heart-warming ending.

This book follows on directly from the ending of Dear Mrs Bird. Emmy Lake is still working for the ‘Woman’s Friend’ magazine and this time they’ve been asked by the Ministry of Information to help write articles that will encourage women to volunteer to work in order to support the war effort. Emmy goes to interview some of the ladies that are already volunteering and soon learns that they face a number of obstacles.

I found it really interesting to learn how women workers were treated during this time period, I’d never considered before that they may have trouble with childcare, and how a system used to male workers would struggle to meet or understand their needs. I was also surprised to learn that some women needed to work as they would lose essential income if their husbands went missing or killed in action.

I really enjoy these Emmy Lake books as they are told is a very ‘jolly hockey sticks’ type manner, with a light and breezy stiff upper lip, as Emmy gets herself into many a scrape, but they also have a real soul to them and pull back the curtain on the everyday issues that people faced during the second world war.

A big thank you to the publisher for providing me with advance ebook access to this delightful book.

"The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. Until today I had thought we were doing our best. Woman's Friend was full of tips and advice for our readers on all manner of challenges the war had thrown at them...But this was different. It was a direct call from the Government to help recruit women to the war effort - to inspire them...I had always hoped to be a journalist, but I had never dreamt it would involve being part of a campaign like this."

This is the second Emmy Lake book, after 'Dear Mrs Bird', set at a women's magazine, 'Woman's Friend', in wartime London. Following the departure of the formidable Mrs Bird, whilst trying to do her bit to help women struggling during the war, Emmy finds herself involved in not only a government campaign, but with new friends at a munitions factory, many of who are mothers and widows, struggling without a nursery for childcare or without sufficient income. Emmy, and best friend Bunty (still grieving the death of fiancé Bill), are trying to plan her wedding to Captain Charles Mayhew, Emmy's boss's stepbrother. Will Emmy find her way, in spite of all the obstacles women faced at this time? Can she do her duty and stand by her friends?

As with 'Mrs Bird', 'Yours Cheerfully is nostalgic but sheds light on troubled times and the hardships women faced, full of strong characters and plenty of humour l:

"'...I'm going to try the carrot sauce recipe tonight. I know it sounds foul, but they did say it tastes very nearly like chocolate'...[The recipe]...insisted you could make carrots taste of virtually anything if you put your mind to it."

Emmy and Bunty are stoic, determined and stronger than they know and there is a host of charming, supporting characters, some new and some old. Emmy is back doing what she does best, testament to the power of friendship. Heartwarming, delightful and poignant, this is an excellent follow-up to the author's debut.

A J Pearce's first novel, Dear Mrs Bird, was funny, moving and very uplifting. I've been waiting on tenterhooks for the sequel and couldn't great to read Yours Cheerfully. It's just as good as Dear Mrs Bird and continues the story of our heroine Emmeline working as a women's magazine advice columnist in 1941. It's heartwarming to read about her friendship with her best friend Bunty and another character who is introduced a female war worker, but Pearce doesn't shy away from the realities and horrors of war. I hope the third book in the series will come soon!

I loved Dear Mrs Bird, so I was excited to start reading the sequel. Yours Cheerfully was every bit as heartwarming and sweet and immersive as the first book, and I didn't want it to end.

Dear Mrs Bird is my absolute favourite read so when I heard there was a second book I just had to read it straight away! Thanks to Netgalley and Picador Panmacmillan for allowing me to read the ARC. ‘Yours Cheerfully’ will be out 24 June and I can assure you it’s worth the wait.

I had high hopes for this one and it didn’t disappoint. It was an absolute joy to be back in Emmy’s world, she has to be my favourite heroine. Fiercely loyal with a kind soul and a big heart, Emmy is a wonderful character who I could totally picture while reading. As well as catching up with old characters, Bunty, Mr Collins (Or should I say Guy away from the office!) oh and Charles, who is the most wonderful gentleman ever!! We got to meet some new fantastic characters, Anne, Wilf (absolutely love him!) and little Ruby.

‘Dear Mrs Bird’ captured my heart and still hasn’t let go and I find myself still reeling from the events but thankfully ‘Yours Cheerfully’ picks up pretty much where we left it. I loved the storyline, following Emmy’s journey with Woman’s Friend magazine focusing on female workers during World War II. I never thought I would be one for war stories but I find them captivating, times were extremely hard for all but there’s something quite aspiring when reading their positive outlook on life. Really does makes me think twice about moaning for just ‘staying home’ during the pandemic.

‘Dear Mrs Bird’ is still my absolute fave but as a sequel ‘Yours Cheerfully’ was a truly wonderful heartwarming read that left me all fuzzy inside! I’m really hoping this isn’t the end we see of Emmy!

I absolutely adored this sequel to Mrs Bird. Going back to these seemingly simpler times with Emmy and her pals was totally delightful! I really hope we're going to be treated to a further instalment very soon.

I really enjoyed Dear Mrs Bird, so was happy to discover that a book two was following, and even more delighted to be offered an advanced copy.
It was wonderful to be back in the world of Emmy, as she entered the world of journalism, in the WW2 era, as a fully-fledged reporter, with real responsibilities of her own.
Mixed in with her blossoming relationship with Charles, and her new friendship with Alice, being reunited with characters like her best friend, Bunty, the story was a true pleasure to read.
I loved how the plight of women, who wanted to be a part of the war effort, but who found themselves stuck, due to the ties of motherhood, was highlighted within this story, too.
And of course, the love story's culmination was perfect, though not without its own fraught moments!
Many thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for an ARC, in exchange for an honest opinion.

I adored Dear Mrs Bird and was so thrilled to read this follow-up. It takes up where the previous left off and follows protagonist Emmy Lake through the war. It's another lovely lovely book, a gentle read, and one which was a comfort. I didn’t find it quite as absorbing as the previous (I rather missed Mrs Bird), but it's still so enjoyable and I will absolutely be reading the next installment if there is one.