The Girl From Bletchley Park by Kathleen McGurl is a dual timeline tale, beginning in 2019 where Julia is running her own IT business from her home along with her business partner and a few members of staff. Life is hectic as she also has two young sons and a less than helpful husband who is often absent from the home. Hmm.
When Julia discovers that Pamela, her grandmother had worked at Bletchley Park during the war the time slips back to 1943 where Pamela has just been offered a place at Oxford University to study maths, but when her brother joins the RAF to do his bit she begins to think that she should do something to help the war effort too. Her maths teacher suggests that she could defer her Oxford place as people with her mathematical abilities are needed. Pamela passes the Bletchley interview and in no time she’s in her WRNS uniform and is billeted at the nearby very grand Woburn Abbey.
Back in 2019 Julia’s brother is moving house and has brought boxes of old family related photos and books for Julia to look through, it’s only then that they discover that their grandmother had worked at Bletchley Park during World War 2, she had kept it secret her entire life.
I enjoyed this one but as ever with a dual timeline novel there’s one that I prefer and it annoys me when the action moves away from my preferred setting. Obviously it was the Bletchley Park setting that I found most interesting, especially as we managed to visit the place in 2020 – during a brief lift of the lockdown. You can see some my blogposts about it here.
Both stories do have echoes of each other with the women suffering betrayal at the hands of their menfolk, but I found the 2019 story to be so predictable, possibly it was meant to be.
I was sent a digital copy of this book by the publisher HQ/HarperCollins via NetGalley.
I like the setting of Bletchley Park, but like you, I sometimes have problems with dual timeline stories. I may give this a try someday.
tracybham,
The Bletchley Park parts were by far the more interesting to me. If it pops up really cheap in digital form it might be worthwhile giving it a go.
I do love any stories to do with Bletchley Park.
Jo,
So do I, especially after I visited the place, I far preferred those sections of the book. I think it was you who pointed me in the direction of this book so thank you.