April 14, 2026 by Rock the Boat
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus
This was such a fun book, and SO well researched. I loved the inclusion of information about the Agnes Baden-Powell, who started the British Girl Guides, and her brother Robert, who started the Boy Scouts. It didn't surprise me that girls' badges included things like laundry and child care, but I appreciated the author's note explaining that things were very different in the early 1900s, and that the genders were treated differently.
Set during WWI, we meet Phyllis and Annie Means, whose brother Dan is off fighting in the war. Their parents run a shop, and are reluctant to let them join the Girl Guides because they are known to run about the streets without the proper amount of petticoats! They do join, and are later approached to be messengers for MI5 because the Boy Scouts were unreliable!
The family also takes in a neighboring shop owner whose husband is German. He's been incarcerated, the shop has been attacked, and the daughter, Minna, is welcomed into the guides as well. I loved seeing that the Means family were empathetic, even though Annie still thought that Minna might be a spy.
WWI had devastating effects on British society. Dan comes back missing an arm but feels lucky. I very much enjoyed this book, and it is available in prebind from Titlewave, although not in hardcover. I would love to buy it, but I don't have the readers for WWI historical fiction. Larger collections that can afford this additional purchase should definitely look into it. A bit of a departure from Webb's usual slightly magical titles, but extremely good!
This is available in both paperback and prebind from Follett, and would be a great choice for readers who enjoyed Bunce's Myrtle Hardcastle mysteries or Stevenson's Wells and Wong books.
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