This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
REVIEWED BY DEBS CARR
It’s wartime in the East End of London and Queenie Dove is only six when she firsts steals something. Okay it’s only a pint of milk from someone’s doorstep, but she soon realizes that her need to provide for her brother and younger sister is something that develops into a habit and, let’s face it, how else is she going to get all the necessities she feels she needs.
Her mum has already pretty much given up on life and spends most of her time in a drunken stupor, her dad is in and out of the nick and although her gran does her best, there’s only so much the old woman can do to try and look after Queenie and her siblings.
One day Queenie arrives home to discover a tragedy that will haunt her for the rest of her life. She feels guilty for not being able to stop it from happening and as she grows up, suffering more loss and heartache, when her gran is trampled to death in the Bethnal Green tube disaster during the Blitz, Queenie has to find a way to survive without her. She is taught how to get what she wants from the women her father associates with and eventually falls in love with Tony, a bad boy with dark and sultry looks that she can’t resist. Even her father warns her off him, but she doesn’t want to listen, until one day she realizes that she has to make a decision that will devastate her little daughter, whilst at the same time save her from leading the life Queenie has endured.
I bought this book in Shakespeare & Co in Paris last week and read it in two days. Lucky Bunny is written in the first person. It’s fast-paced, racy and fun, giving the reader insights into what it must have been like for a young girl with little guidance and no support, whose first experience of the country is when she’s evacuated with her brother. Jill Dawson expertly links the characters in the book to actual people and incidents, such as Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in England on 13 July 1955 and the Great Train Robbery, which ends up making you feel as if you’re reading about someone’s real life experiences rather than that of a character in a book.
I enjoyed Lucky Bunny very much and will now have to look up Jill Dawson’s other books.
9/10
For more about Jill Dawson and Lucky Bunny you can visit her site.
Lucky Bunny is published in hardback on 4th August 2011