Book: The Eights
Author: Joanna Miller
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟 3/4
Completed this for the Popsugar Reading Challenge Prompt #33 (a book about college) and the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge Prompt #51 (includes a map).
In 1920, Oxford is admitting female students for the first time.
Dora was never supposed to be here – but after she loses her fiancé and brother, she decides to take their places.
Beatrice is the daughter of a famous suffragette, but struggles to have her own identity, often overshadowed by her difficult mother.
Socialite Otto, is still haunted by her memories of the war years.
Marianne is quiet and intelligent, but bears a secret that could undo her.
This is a story of friendship, success despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles, the scars of the First World War, and of women trying to find their place in the world.
It is painstakingly researched, and that mostly comes through without distracting the reader from the story.
I really wanted to love this more than I did. The Eights has moments of pure brilliance, but dragged at others.
It had all the right ingredients – four distinct and powerful characters who have moments of real chemistry on the page – and each fight their own private battles.
Many people have loved this, so perhaps it just wasn’t for me.
That said, it does come together at the end rather nicely, and things turned out in a way that was true to the story and characters.
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