“All great writing comes from a desire to escape, but you have to know what you are escaping to. The audience will follow anything you do if they are confident you know where you are going.”–Natalie Jenner, Bloomsbury Girls

I enjoyed Jenner’s book The Jane Austen Society so I was excited to read Bloomsbury Girls. It wasn’t until I began reading, however, that I realized it is a continuation of sorts of The Jane Austen Society. Evie Stone is the main character that bridges both books and there are minor references to other characters from The Jane Austen Society, but either book can be read as a stand alone.

This book is set a few years after The Jane Austen Society.  Evie was accepted into the first class of female students to earn a degree at Cambridge but after being passed over for a less qualified male peer at the university, she now works at Bloomsbury Books and is trying to figure out what her future looks like. She is joined by two other female associates at the bookstore–beautiful Vivien Lowry whose fiancé was killed in the war and Grace Perkins, mother of two, who works to support her family after her husband’s breakdown following the war. These three women have big ideas for the bookstore but are fighting against tradition, the men in charge, and the fifty-one unbreakable rules that govern the shop. They cross paths with some of the biggest names in literature at the time and create a path for themselves that opens more doors and opportunities than they ever thought possible.

Content Advisory: Language, references to sex, misogyny