From the Bookshelf of Constant Reader…

The Summer Before the War

Helen Simonson

Start date: June 15, 2018

Finish date: July 1, 2018

Discussion: Reading List

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Reading List

* The Schedule for July through Dec. 2025
By Lynn · 1 post · 47 views

last updated Jun 20, 2025 08:37AM

Call for Nominations - Reading List, January-June 2026
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What Members Thought

Feb 22, 2017 Katy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction, fiction, books-owned-2017, read-my-own-books-2017

This is a wonderful story about people living in a small village in Southeast England just before the beginning of hostilities in World War I. Helen Simonson is a gifted writer. It was a pleasure to read such a sensitive, intelligent, well written, and carefully paced novel. It reminded me of Jane Austen with a little Georgette Heyer thrown in for some delicious humor. It is basically a novel of manners. It portrays the social issues of the time: issues of class which so permeate the fabric of e ...more

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Jul 21, 2017 Jane rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction

I loved the atmosphere...Rye in the summer before the onset of World War II. There's a way in which it's very Downton Abbey-ish. Larges cast of characters...at times I stopped trying to keep track of them. Beatrice, Hugh and Daniel (two cousins who are close and as different from each other as can be, their aunt and uncle (closer to them than parents) Agatha and John...and at least thirty other characters...some very wonderfully annoying, others very stiff-upper-lip British. and still others who ...more

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Sep 08, 2023 Danielle rated it it was amazing

This was such a good book. It carried me through a transition in my personal life and was great having a connection with the characters to help me escape into their own chaotic world. I did get a bit frustrated with Ms. Nash, who I found dry and moody and quite judgmental at times (even given the era the book was set in), but the book was lovely and unpredictable.

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