The Underground Library - Jennifer Ryan - ★★★★

AUTHOR: Jennifer Ryan

GENRE: Historical Fiction

PUBLICATION DATE: March 12, 2024

RATING: 4 stars.

In a Nutshell: A historical fiction based on true events, focussing on the functioning of the Bethnal Green Library from the local underground station during the WWII Blitz. The ending was a bit too smooth for my liking, but the rest of the plot was worth it. I learnt a few new facts as well, which isn’t something I expected. Recommended!

Plot Preview:

1940, Bethnal Green, London.

Juliet Lansdown, 26, has just been appointed the new deputy librarian at the Bethnal Green library, but when she takes over, she realises that the head librarian refuses to adopt new ideas to imbue fresh life into the library. Juliet is determined to prove to him that women librarians can handle the job adeptly.

Katie Upwood, 18, loves her job at the library though it is only for the short term before she heads off to university. But after the death of her boyfriend on the front line and some big personal upheavals, Katie finds herself handling a life-altering problem with no one to help out.

Sofie Baumann, 19, a young German-Jewish refugee, has come to London on a domestic service visa, only to be stuck with an employer who treats her miserably. She cannot leave her job as it’s the only way she can legally stay in London. The library is her refuge from drudgery while she hopes to reunite with her sister and her father, who are still stuck in Germany.

The story comes to us in the third person perspective of these three characters.

I am still on a sabbatical from WWII fiction. Historical fiction is actually among my favourite genres, but I have burnt myself out reading too many similar WWII stories. The only reason I grabbed this novel is that I had enjoyed Jennifer Ryan’s ‘The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle’, another WWII work covering a part of the war I knew nothing about. I was hoping for a similar experience this time around, and luckily, this one worked even better.

Bookish Yays:

💐 The three female characters: strong girls in tough circumstances. I liked all of them almost equally, which is quite rare in multi-character novels.

💐 The story alternates across the three leading ladies without feeling jumpy. There are clearly defined perspectives and behavioural traits, and the three girls never sound like copies of each other. The personality of each character is distinctly written.

💐 Each girl also battles a personal predicament, thus adding depth to their individual arcs and providing some interesting subplots to the novel.

💐 I loved everything about the library – its functioning, its non-book activities, its shift to the underground station location, and the challenges it faced above and below. That this book was based on the actual Bethnal Green library’s operations during WWII enhanced the appeal. (During the Blitz, the library became the first, and possibly only, bomb-shelter library in all of Britain – wow!)

💐 Even beyond the library, I loved how the story demonstrated the importance of books and reading in bringing joy and hope to people’s lives. This novel proves how books can be an escape from the troubles of reality.

💐 Though I have read plenty of WWII fiction based in the UK, I still learnt some new things about the wartime era. I never knew about internment camps in the Isle of Man. I also liked how effectively the wartime constraints were incorporated into the plotline. The story also includes a couple of real disasters connected to the underground library. The Blitz-related scenes were haunting.

💐 The author’s elaborate note, mentioning the real life incidents in Bethnal Green during the war, and her creative choices on which facts to include and which events to fictionalise. Loved it!

Bookish Mixed Bags:

🌹 The book has several interesting secondary characters, with Sebastian Falconbury, Mrs. Ottley, Mac, and the two Miss Ridleys being exceptional. However, many of the remaining secondary characters felt cliched and one-noted. The male characters, except for Sebastian and Mac, are either annoying or boring. I also didn’t understand why the book made Mrs. Ottley sound so old when she was described as being ‘about forty’.

🌹 While I do not like romance appearing in non-romance genres, I was slightly better prepared for it this time around, thanks to my experience with this author’s earlier book, which was slightly more romance than historical. Thankfully, only Juliet’s arc had too much of romance; Sofie’s and Katie’s arcs were balanced and romance-free respectively. The romance stays clean and doesn’t overpower the main topic of the library.

Bookish Nays:

🌵 The overly positive ending. I get why such a neat ending was chosen, but it felt too happy and even too straightforward for a WWII work. There was no poignancy despite personal losses. The book would have worked even better for me if the ending had been more realistic than predictable.

Bookish If Onlys:

There is another novel based on the Bethnal Green Library: 'The Little Wartime Library' by Kate Thompson. I haven’t read this one yet, so I cannot compare the two novels. But what I find really interesting is that both books depict a female librarian driving the success of the library from the underground location. In truth, it was two male librarians, George F Vale and his deputy Stanley Snaith, who were at the helm of library operations. In the Jennifer Ryan book, the only male librarian is a pompous snob who considers women inferior. All other library staff and volunteers are female. I wish there had been at least one positive male librarian character in honour of the real librarians.

All in all, I liked this book a lot. While I do wish that it had dialled down the romantic elements and finetuned the overly smooth finish, it offered me much to enjoy. While I am still not going to rush towards WWII books with open arms, I am now more amenable to giving such books a fair chance.

Definitely recommended to historical fiction readers who love books about books, and even to those fed up of typical WWII fiction.

My thanks to Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Underground Library”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

If you enjoy this kind of a story, you might also want to try The Blackout Book Club by Amy Lynn Green, another WWII historical fiction about a library book club, but with much less focus on the war and more focus on the book club itself. I loved this novel as well. Its being set in the USA sets it apart from the usual Europe-centric WWII stories.

You can read more about Bethnal Green library’s wartime operations here: https://www.historiamag.com/bethnal-greens-underground-wartime-library/