A War of Her Own, by Sylvia Dickey Smith

Bea is a typical wife in 1940's America.  When her husband announces he is leaving her and their son to take up with his mistress from the shipyard, Bea feels as if her world will crumble.  She decides to get a job at the shipyard herself, and begins living as an independent woman, all the while trying to figure out exactly who she is.

Let me start by saying this certainly is not the worst book I ever read.  But being set during World War II, I went into this novel with high hopes, perhaps unreasonably high, and the book just was not able to deliver what I had anticipated.  It seemed as though this book was a Lifetime movie version of the war, and what it meant to be a woman during wartime.  The characters were really one dimensional, and I had a very hard time feeling at all connected or invested in any single person in the book.

The storyline was not a bad storyline, but again, it seemed to present a somewhat sanitized view of wartime, and womanhood.  Even though some of the things mentioned included abortion, incest, and suicide, the book felt positively antiseptic.  Topics like that should elicit feeling, and sadly, this book and all its topics produced no emotion for me.  It was merely a story, on paper, and did not come to life for me at all.  I think this would have worked better as a longer book, or perhaps a series, taking more time to better develop the characters, and bring them to life.

A touring review copy of this book made available courtesy of Crazy Book Tours.