Published By: Usborne
Pages: 384
Released On: 08/05/2025
Reading Age: 9-12 years
There’s a war going on out there, and I’m missing it.
When war comes to London in 1939, Ronnie Smith is scared and excited: scared of the bombs that fall at night, but excited to race his friends to collect the best bits of shrapnel every morning.
But for Ronnie, the battles aren’t just in the sky and on the streets. They’re at school and at home too. His little brother is up to no good with a secret job and dangerous new friends, and Ronnie’s worried he’s getting himself into big trouble.
Ronnie’s desperate to help his little brother. But he isn’t expecting to uncover secrets that could change the fate of the whole war…
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Usborne for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I know they’re aimed at children but I’ve read Jenny’s books before and always enjoyed them. This was a far cry from her others and I’m a bit torn about it.
I don’t remember there being a whole lot of children’s war books when I was young, apart from Goodnight Mister Tom, but now you’ve got them from the likes of Phil Earle and now Jenny Pearson, and I think it’s really important to teach children about the war in a suitable way.
It is age appropriate but doesn’t shy away rom the harshness of the war, and nor should it. And I liked that the protagonists were children too, because they definitely react to something like war in a different way than adults, and this juxtaposition between innocence and warfare was interesting.
I found it quite repetitive, especially in the first quarter or so, to the point that I was skimming bits, wanting to get to the next chapter in the hope that something else was going to happen. It did get better as it went along and other things started to happen, and it started to play on the reader’s emotions.
I didn’t have a huge care for the characters. Ronnie was okay, but I didn’t like his brother Mickey (at least for the most part), and Jonnie, who was made out to be the villain, felt too much like a caricature and he annoyed me, and I was starting to dread the chapters he was in. And the female characters sort of felt pointless. Not in the sense that in period women were seen as subordinate, but they didn’t bring anything to the story.
It felt too much of a war story to be this big important literary or character exploration, but too much character and background for it to be a great war story. It felt like Jenny was feeing her way through it, like she was trying to force something it wasn’t.
All the reviews I have seen have been five star, absolutely raving about it, but I am the anomaly. There are good points to it, it’s atmospheric, interesting look at the war through the community rather than the way itself, seeing war through a child’s eye etc. But I felt there were too many things happening, trying to fight for the main plot, and it was repetitive and I didn’t find it all that exciting. Maybe this is a kids book that should stay with the kids. Maybe in schools. But as an adult, it just felt flat. It was a pleasant and quick read, but I didn’t really get it, sadly. But I seem to be the only person to think that way.
Books By Your Bedside 