The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Under normal circumstances I would have never chosen a book with this title but, as luck would have it, circumstances were not normal and I picked it up and gave it a second look. I figured that the price was sure right and all of the profits going for a great cause so ... why not.

I was very pleasantly surprised. I'd told a friend just after I started reading it that it was a hoot. But the story got much deeper. Although it is written with a big dose of humor and I did find myself chuckling I also cried and groaned as I read a very moving tale, all written as letters to, or from, Juliet by friends and perfect strangers.

A succesful author, in a bit of a slump, gets some extarordinary inspiration from a chance correspondence with Dawsey, who was requesting information on a book that had once belonged to Juliet and had her name and address inscribed in it. The letters begin to unfold the story of a community on Guernsey, an Island in the English Channel, during the German Occupation of WWII.

The Guernsey Literary an Potato Peel Pie Society is chalk full of quirky charachters (Islanders are always quirky - that's why they don't live on the main land in the first place) that are 100% believable. A fun read with enough depth to make you want to "think on it" for a day before starting something else!

View all my reviews

It has been way too long -- Time flies by - sometimes in a gentle breeze, sometimes in mighty gusts. The clock ticks and chimes each hour, the sun rises and sets, the months blend one into the next without much fanfare. Then there is an event, an occurance that marks your life calendar forever. It may be something big or small in the scope of human existence but the remarkable shift it causes in your life, in your thinking, your heart, deep in your soul will not be forgotten. How much can a heart hold? How vast are it's boarders? I am glad that I can't answer that and thankful for all of the experiences that I have been blessed with. I hope that you feel blessed - because you are!