I couldn’t resist reading an advanced copy of A Cake for the Gestapo when I was contacted about reviewing and I found it completely captivating!
Set in Jersey during 1940 this story certainly opened my eyes to just how difficult a time it was for those living there during the second world war. I knew very little about this before. I can’t imagine being so isolated and cut off from the rest of the world without hearing from loved ones for weeks and months at a time and not really knowing exactly what was happening in the world around me. It must have been terrifying.
This story focuses mostly on the impact the war had on the children of the island. There are some amazingly resilient children in this book, all getting on the best way they know how. Reading about the war from the innocent perspectives of these characters makes this a difficult read at times. I couldn’t see the words I was reading at one point for the tears in my eyes. The loss of someone due to a lack of basic healthcare and medicine is just heart-breaking.
Naturally there is some humour in this story, as the main characters are children, but more than anything there is such a massive sense of community reflected in these pages. This was an island of residents who stuck together, through thick and thin. None of them had much for themselves, but whatever they did have they shared wherever needed. Truly inspirational!
A beautifully written, compelling read which I will be more than happy to recommend to all.
Many thanks to the author, publisher and Emily Walton for my ARC.
Buy your copy here…..
About the Author
Jacqueline King is a Channel Islander living in Somerset, who has written about everything and everyone ever since she could first grasp a pencil. She cut her teaching teeth alongside Robert Westall in her first post in a Cheshire school and has spent half a lifetime telling stories to primary pupils in remote village schools across the UK. These days, Jacqueline leads creative writing in Forest Schools, sculpts in bronze and stone and continues to be bewitched by islands and the sea. Jacqueline has published articles in the TES & the Countryman, comic verses in MacMillan anthologies and won many prizes and commendations for her writing.
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