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Gran Leon Books - Beautiful Journey
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List Price: $13.95
Our Price: $11.16
Your Save: $ 2.79 ( 20% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Bella Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781594931284
ISBN: 1594931283
Label: Bella Books
Manufacturer: Bella Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 276
Publication Date: 2008-09-16
Publisher: Bella Books
Studio: Bella Books
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Editorial Reviews:
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Kit Anderson is determined to make a difference. All around her the Battle for Britain is raging, and ferrying factory-fresh airplanes to combat bases makes excellent use of her skills as flight lieutenant for the British Women's Air Transport Auxiliary. An American in southern England, she is undaunted by war. It's safer than love. The talented aviatrix could fly a crippled craft through a thunderstorm without a compass and find her way home, so it is singularly disconcerting to find herself flying in circles around Emily Mills, a too young, too attractive and too abrasive British literature teacher. Even though Emily's grandmother is Lady Marble, it's a time of war and scarcity and Emily needs work. Kit offers to help her find a job on the air base--and as is often true, no good deed goes unpunished. There's no compass on earth to help when the irascible Emily gets past all Kit's defenses. She knows the sparks could turn to flame, and their hearts are in the line of fire. Kenna White turns her storytelling talents to this unforgettable tale of women who found the courage to love in the midst of a world at war.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: What a Wonderful Tale
Comment: Kenna White has consistently written wonderful stories. It seems no matter how many she actually gets published, there is no end to her imagination. No two of her books are alike. Here she takes us to wartime in England. It was a time when women weren't allowed in combat and when ladies were ladies.
Opening the book is Kit Anderson, an American woman who transports war planes for the British. She lives a simple life. She doesn't have a girlfriend. She rents a room from a local family. She has few friends. All of that changes when her landlord's brother's home is bombed and she is forced to find a new home. Kit rents a cottage from Lady Marble, a local bit of pseudo-royalty with a granddaughter, Emily, who doesn't appreciate Kit's presence. Of course, Lady Marble is happy to have Kit at her home and asks her to help Emily find a job at the airfield.
Emily seems to be haunted by bad luck and it reflects somewhat poorly on Kit. At the same time, Emily and Kit have a tenuous relationship that surprisingly develops into something undeniable. It's not easy to tell if it's them or their circumstances that push them into thinking about the future. Either way, their story draws the reader in and doesn't let go.
Bottom Line - Kit, Emily, and the supporting cast come together to act out a timeless tale of strife and romance. Truly one of the strongest voices in the genre, White is at the top of her game and I hope she stays there for a long time to come. Don't miss this one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Journey is a beautiful story.
Comment: Having just finished this story I had to immediately write a review. I do have a tendancy to write reviews on the books I love and this is one more that I think everyone will enjoy.
In WW2 the men of the UK were off fighting the war and they were losing pilots quickly during the Battle for Britain. A way was needed to move damaged planes to areas where they could be worked on, and then shipped back to the fighting squadrons again. How to do that without pulling needed combat pilots away? The ATA (the British Women's Air Transport Auxiliary) was created for that purpose. In addition to women of the "empire and commonwealth" (Australia, Canada, England, Scotland, etc) many American women also joined. These are the facts...now to the story...
Kit Anderson, an American from Kansas, leaves a partnership in a commerical flying enterprise, to join the ATA for an 18 month enlistment period. She is the flight leader of a group of women who work hard to overcome the prejudices that they face every day. They suffer through poor food, poor housing, shot up airplanes and hostile attitudes to ensure that planes are moved to be repaired and then put back in service. Through all of this they care for each other and support each other and, as we find out while reading, they also love each other.
Yanks weren't accepted with open arms, and that's quite clear in Kit's case. She gets pushed out of her humble room to make way for some of her landlady's family who get bombed out of their home in London. She finds a nice cottage, owned by Lady Marble, and moves in only to be told my Lady Marble's granddaughter, Emily Mills, that she must move out immediately.
Lady Marble insists that Kit can stay and later enlists Kit's help to get Emily a job in the support area on the air base. Kit agrees but soon wonders what she ever did to deserve what happens as Emily becomes an "accident waiting to happen" in the multiple jobs she's given. Sparks fly between them, first in hostility, later in a passion that threatens to destroy them both.
The only problem that I had with this story was that it ended too soon. I felt myself wanting to hear more, to understand more about what drove women to stand up and fight during these times.
Read this story. This is the 2nd story that I've read by Kenna White. I enjoyed them both (the other was Skin Deep) but this is my favorite.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Touching and mesmerizing historical romance, 3-1/2 stars
Comment: I have no expertise on which to base the historical accuracy of this novel. I know little to nothing about WWII aircraft, or the geography or logistics that went into staging the British defense. If I had that expertise, I may have been annoyed at any inaccuracies. But I still get the sense that this was a well-researched book, and enough of the details were correct to accurately outline the experiences of women in the ATA, which was the real point of the book (apart from romance).
So outside any possible historical inaccuracies, I found myself enchanted by the vivid picture Kenna White painted of the women serving in the ATA during WWII. Her descriptions of flying and the rigors of a nation at war were thrilling and heart-rending. Rather than be frustrated at the societal strictures of the time as I'd expected, I was taken by the strength and the heroism of the women living their lives to the best of their abilities, making sacrifices for a greater good, and helping lay the groundwork for succeeding generations of women to stretch the "norms" of society.
I wasn't expecting much going in, and ended up being delighted and inspired. The characters were well-drawn. The atmosphere was palpable and present. The flying was exciting. The emotions expressed seemed realistic.
My biggest quibble is probably the ending, and it's one that I have repeatedly with works in this genre. Many authors do a great job at the set-up, and working through the meat of the issues and circumstances that create the drama, but then they reach the end and suddenly everything wraps up neatly and happily with nothing more than a couple of statements from one or both of the protagonists. It kind of leaves the reader hanging, and I don't particularly like it. This novel was no exception.
Also, I'm not a big fan of the great emotional manipulation of tragedy being necessary to jolt our heroes into doing what we think they should. But it's handled more deftly than usual here, the groundwork being laid in advance, and it's more realistic in a war-time setting, so this was just a nitpick.
I've enjoyed the works I've read by this author, and this one rises well above the average. I expect I'll pick it up again in the future, and I'll definitely read more from this author.
Customer Rating:
Summary: inexcusible
Comment: To be enjoyable, a novel an historical novel should at least get it's facts straight.This novel is so inaccurate that it would take a novel to point out all the mistakes. Of the aircraft referred to in the novel, the Chipmnunk entered service in 1950, the p-51 never flew with the R.A.F, it was always referred to as a Mustang, the Lancaster did nor enter squadron service until 1942, and I do not believe that any responsible organisation would ever send a badly damaged aircraft into the air to be flown to a factory for repair. In passing, my jeep gets 20 miles on 6 litres of gas, how far do you think an engine 5 times that displacement would go on the same amount, maybe to the start of the runway. The districts of Brixton and Paddington are in greater London and have never to my knowledge housed any aircraft factories, certainly not Avro, let alone runways. as for flying to Dublin, during WW2 Ireland was neutral and would not have allowed any military aircraft in it's airspace. In the British military , officers do not snap off salutes at the slightest provocation, that is strictly an American habit. In fact, no salute is given or accepted by any individual when not in uniform including the wearing of a hat. At social functions, such as the dance, no military personel would expect or receive a salute from anyone no matter his, or her rank. Do I need to go on? everest
Customer Rating:
Summary: BEAUTIFUL story
Comment: Kenna White can tell a tale. I have enjoyed Kenna's tales before and look forward to her work. This storyline lead me to the stories my father told about his experiences on an air craft carrier before during and after WWII. Hearing about the old planes and the problems they faced brought up many a memory. My Mom helped put many a plane together here in Arizona at Thunderbird air field. So the memories evoked by this book were part of my enjoyment. The work itself was well written, I could visualize the events in the story line. I became a part of the story as a watcher and felt for the characters. They are strong women. Enough of the storyline was held back so that I was surprised at some of the outcomes. A good read that left me wanting to know more.
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