MARY ANN SHAFFER and ANNIE BURROWS The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society ***(*)

We both read this novel and both enjoyed it.

It's set in 1946 and feisty Juliet is facing a bit of writer's block. Then she gets a letter from someone in Guernsey who's bought a second-hand book with her name in it. They begin a correspondence which puts her in touch with most of the members of the (fictional) Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society which formed during the German occupation of Guernsey.

The book consists solely of letters and tells the story of Juliet and the society members in Guernsey, and some of the harrowing things they went through (and some of the funny things too). It's a wartime story, a love story, and sometimes a weird cross between Jane Austen and PG Wodehouse. But it works.

One of the reviews quoted on the back says, 'Delightfully spirited and quirky... You'd have to be pretty hard-hearted not to fall under its spell,' and that's right (even if the quote does come from the accursed Daily Mail).