Dear Mrs. Bird by AJ Pearce (FIC Pea)

London.  1940. The Blitz is in full swing.  Emmy and her Best Friend Bunty are trying to keep their spirits up while doing their bit for the war effort.  Emmy desperately wants to be a Lady War Correspondent and jumps at the chance to be a Junior associate for a prestigious London magazine.

Only it turns out that Emmy should have read the Fine Print.  Rather than working for the prestigious magazine (where she would have surely been able to refine her skills and move along the path to becoming a Lady War Correspondent), Emmy finds herself at the very much lower down the ranks cousin - a women's magazine that has seen better days as far as circulation goes.  She is assigned to help Henrietta Bird who answers letters from women for the Problem Page.

Mrs. Bird has strict standards about what kind of letters can be answered and printed.  Emmy finds to her dismay that most of the letters they receive fall in the Unacceptable category.  Mrs. Bird refuses to answer any letter that contains any Unpleasantness. But as Emmy reads the desperate pleas from women who have Gone Too Far or can't bear to have their children evacuated, she begins to write back to them secretly.  Needless to say, there are Consequences.

Emmy is delightful and irrepressible.  She is determined to make the best of things (while sometimes making them worse).  I loved reading about her adventures, laughed out loud often, and sometimes cried with her.  A fun read.  I can't wait for the author's next book.