Review | This Lovely City by Louise Hare

Blurb

The drinks are flowing.

The music is playing.

But the party can’t last.

With the Blitz over and London reeling from war, jazz musician Lawrie Matthews has answered England’s call for help. Fresh off the Empire Windrush, he’s taken a tiny room in south London lodgings and has fallen in love with the girl next door.

Touring Soho’s music halls by night, pacing the streets as a postman by day, Lawrie has poured his heart into his new home – and it’s alive with possibility. Until, one morning, he makes a terrible discovery.

As the local community rallies, fingers of blame are pointed at those who had recently been welcomed with open arms. And, before long, the newest arrivals become the prime suspects in a tragedy which threatens to tear the city apart.

Review

A beautiful novel with an incredible sense of place & time, I was immediately transported to a post-war Britain from ruins of bombed-out homes to the smokey jazz clubs of Soho you feel like you are there, so vividly described London becomes a character in its own right.

I enjoyed the dual narrative running thought the novel. Lawrie & Evie are well-drawn characters, interesting characters by no means perfect but reasonably flawed, I soon found myself rooting for. Hare really captures the young love against all odds feeling between the pair.

I found it difficult to read in places the racial and social mistreatment suffered by immigrants who answered England's call for help after the war is heartbreaking.

It just missed out on 5⭐ because I found it was a bit slow at times and dragged a little.

Overall this vivid, atmospheric & thought-provoking debut is well-worth reading.

Thanks to HQ Stories for sending me this in exchange for an open and honest review.

⭐⭐⭐⭐