Unfortunately, this one wasn't for me, some sections jumped around so much I struggled to keep up with who was talking and what was happening.
I loved the premise of the women in the motocycle club and the time period isn't one that appears in a lot of books. I also liked Constance and Poppy as characters, but it wasn't enough to hold my attention.
I'm giving 3 stars as I think others would enjoy this and the writing style.

I was swept along in this engaging story set in the summer of 1919. Armistice has been brokered, men are returning from the Great War and Constance Haverhill has abruptly lost her wartime job as an estate manager. Her summer sojourn as a lady’s companion in a seaside hotel cannot last forever but, for a brief interlude, Hazelbourne-on-Sea offers an abundance of pleasant distractions. When Constance meets the irrepressible founder of the Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle Club, the trajectory of her summer is changed irrevocably.

I’d previously come across the concept of despatch riders on a trip to Bletchley Park and was thrilled to discover this fictional work about a group of former female despatch riders who continued to ride, race and repair motorcycles. The War was a time of intense social change and evolving attitudes, yet the progress made was quickly reversed. The novel conveyed how much easier it was for women with wealth and status to subvert social expectations while portraying the pressure for women to conform to society’s notions of respectability and gender roles.

This is a novel that will stoke your inner feminist and draw out your compassion. Simonson sensitively considered the challenges faced by women, foreigners and injured men in the aftermath of the War and did not shy away from the issues of discrimination, prejudice and racism.

This novel was absorbing from beginning to end, though I wish it had concluded with chapter 31 as the summer came to an end and Constance moved on with the next stage in her life. The epilogue was a nice addition to the story in that it clarified Constance’s future, though I felt that it was rather unnecessary.

Thank you so much to Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley for sharing this eARC with me in exchange for an honest review.

It’s the summer of 1919, and Constance Haverhill is being quietly but firmly edged out of the life she made herself useful in—no job, no home, and no real plan beyond avoiding the looming horror of becoming a governess. She’s packed off to a seaside hotel to keep an ailing family friend company, where she rescues a baronet’s daughter from social disgrace and is swept into the breezy, slightly chaotic orbit of Poppy Wirrall—motorcycle enthusiast, taxi operator, and ringleader of a band of trouser-wearing women keen on flight and freedom.

The tone is bright and lightly fizzy, but there are deeper waters beneath the froth as Constance and her new friends face the slow rollback of wartime freedoms, and the buffeting shifts in social, sexual, and global, politics. There’s a romantic thread—Harris, a grumpy war hero brother, naturally—but the heart lies in its group of women trying to stay wide awake in a world that wants them back asleep.

Simonson brings the era’s frictions and failings into focus with warmth and sharp wit, without swamping the story. Though the women are her focus, she’s empathetic to the realities of men returning from war damaged in mind and body. Though PTSD isn’t overtly addressed, one could argue that it’s clearly visible in some behaviours.

The Club is not quite as rich or vivid a circle as the students in contemporaneous and similarly-themed The Eights (Joanna Miller), but we know them well enough to be invested. The true centre is Constance: trying to hold her footing amid shifting ground, orbiting those clinging to the old world and those exhilarated by change. She’s attuned to every unguarded flicker of humanity, especially in a world that prizes propriety above truth.

There’s some narrative overstuffing towards the end, but the dialogue sparkles, the prose zips along, and Hazelbourne is a pleasure to spend time in. Often funny, sometimes moving, and always good company.

Thank you Bloomsbury and NetGalley for sending me an earc of this lovely book.
I have previously read Miss Pettigrew's Last Stand and enjoyed it thoroughly. This novel is I think, even better.
Constance is a very feisty young heroine and Harris a very Rochester like hero!
Helen Simonson has really done her homework and the sense of time and place, and the social network of this time just at the end of WW1 is very good and immersive.
As Constance gets to know Poppy, Tilly and Iris, the ladies of the Motorcycle and Flying Club, she too becomes aware of how much her horizons COULD widen, but also, realistically, how constrained she will probably be because of her class.
I really enjoyed the depiction of the motorcycle ladies, and their frustration that, as soon as war was over, they were expected to step back from the jobs that they had been doing so admirably during the war years.
The second string story of Mrs Fog, the lady to whom Constance is a companion, is charming and throws an interesting light on the bigotry of the time in English society around 1919 and the twenties.
This is a very enjoyable light read, with enough social context to make it a bit more interesting than a simple saga type novel.

This was an historical novel set in a time frame that is not often written about- the period immediately after the First World War.
It examines the role of women and how their lives were changed during the war and then how they were then forced to go back to how things were once the men came home. This proved very difficult particularly for those women who had learnt new skills and enjoyed much more freedom during the war years.
Constance is a nurse companion to an elderly lady, the mother of Lady Mercer, who is recuperating from influenza at a hotel in the coastal town of Hazelbourne. Orphaned and with no means to support herself she is forced to rely on the Mercer family who are wealthy aristocrats. During the war she had worked as a bookkeeper for the Mercer’s but lost this role once the war was over.
Whilst at the hotel she meets Poppy who runs a motorcycle taxi service for women. Although she is from a monied family she enjoys running her own business despite making little money and is keen to support other women who must manage on their own or on a very small war pension.
There is also a slow burning romance between Constance and Poppy’s wounded hero brother Harris, who is finding it difficult to adapt to his new circumstances.
I really enjoyed getting to know the strong female characters, Constance and Poppy who showed how much women had to give and how little they were taken seriously at this time.
Mrs Fogg, Constance’s elderly charge was also interesting and as her back story and her feistiness were revealed , I grew to like her more and more. Although from an older generation she was very forward looking and modern in her outlook.
The reader also witnesses prejudice, against women, against anyone who is not “English” and looks different as well as against Germans living in England at this time. The American fiancé is particularly unpleasant in this respect.
All in all “ The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club “ was a very enjoyable and interesting read and I learnt a lot about this period in history.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my advance copy.

Helen Simonson’s The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club is a spirited, witty novel that captures the energy and uncertainty of post–World War I England through the lives of a vibrant group of young women. Set in the seaside town of Hazelbourne-on-Sea in 1919, the story follows Constance Haverhill, whose precarious future collides with the daring ambitions of Poppy Wirrall and her friends—a generation determined not to retreat quietly into the past.

Simonson’s sharp, charming prose paints a vivid picture of a society in flux, where the freedoms women earned during wartime are under threat. Through the daring motorcycle rides, dreams of flight, and the formation of new enterprises, the novel celebrates women’s resilience, innovation, and refusal to surrender their hard-won independence. Constance’s journey from genteel invisibility to self-determination is particularly moving, while characters like Poppy, Iris, and Tilly embody the exhilarating possibilities and real struggles facing women in a changing world.

Brimming with humor, heart, and historical insight, this novel is a joyous tribute to a generation of women redefining their place in society—and to the friendships, risks, and dreams that helped them do it.