In 2021, Madeline Martin’s The Last Bookshop in London was one of the best books I read that year. I just finished her historical novel, The Booklover’s Library, and it’s going on this year’s list. Martin knows how to tell an emotional story of family, found family, and the love of books and reading, all set in years of turmoil, World War II in England. But, Martin doesn’t focus on London during the Blitz. She sets her story in Nottingham.

Emma Taylor is feeling desperate. As a widow in 1939, she’s unable to get a job due to the marriage bars. Once a woman was married, she had to leave her job, and most places would not hire her, even if she was a widow with a daughter. But, Emma was in Boots, the chemist’s, just in time to see a woman leave her job because she was getting married. She was honest with the hiring manager at the Booklover’s Library, a subscription library on the second floor of Boots’. She needed the job, and she needed it even more with her daughter, Olivia, to raise. They agreed she could train for the job as “Miss Taylor”.

Despite some initial difficulties with Olivia home alone in the afternoon, the two bumped along just fine until the war entered their lives. With orders for children to be evacuated to the country to avoid bombings and fires in the cities, Emma was torn. “Olivia could be sent away to an undisclosed location to live with people Emma didn’t know for an unknown length of time.” As Emma saw it, it was a child’s lot in wartime, banishment. And, Emma couldn’t bear to lose her daughter when it was always the two of them against the world.

At times, The Booklover’s Library is a heartbreaking story of families torn apart during war, of women desperate to work who didn’t marry because of those marriage bars. But, it’s also a book that offers the encouragement of found family, of a community brought together by the trials of war. While Emma suffered with the loss of her daughter, her father’s memory was restored through her work at the Booklover’s Library. “In so many ways, he was there with her in the lending library, coaxing her to appreciate how right returning to community felt. One that centered on books, on being carried away by a story, and staying up far too late into the night on the wings of a tale. These were the people she connected with most in the world.”

There are factual aspects of this book, the marriage bars, the evacuations. But, overall, The Booklover’s Library is the story of a community pulling together during wartime told through the eyes of one widow with a young daughter. Another beautiful story by Martin, with one surprise for those of us who loved The Last Bookshop in London.

Madeline Martin’s website is https://madelinemartin.com/.

The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin. Hanover Square Press, 2024. ISBN 9781335015135 (hardcover), 416p.

FTC Full Disclosure – Library book.