Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for In the Shadow of War by Adrienne Chinn. This is the third book in The Three Fry Sisters series. Although I did not read the first two, I was able to follow this story with not issue. I will however, go back and read the previous two books.

In the Shadow of War (The Three Fry Sisters, #3) by Adrienne Chinn 

Published March 22nd 2024 by One More Chapter

One war may be over, but their fight for survival continues…

For sisters Etta, Jessie and Celie Fry, the Great War and the hardships of the years that followed have taken a heavy toll.

Determined to leave her painful past behind her, Etta heads to the bright lights of Hollywood whilst Jessie, determined to train as a doctor and use her skills to help others, is hampered by the men who dominate her profession. On the vast, empty plains of the Canadian prairies, Celie and her small family stand on the brink of losing everything.

As whispers of a new war make their way to each sister, each must face the possibility of the unthinkable happening again…

4 Stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

In the Shadow of War is the third book in The Fry Sisters Series, that follows the lives of sisters Cecelia (Celie), Etta and Jessie and their mother Christiana Fry. This is the first book I have read in this series and although was able to follow the storylines, I missed a lot of background. I will read the others. This book has all three of the sisters married or widowed and living all over the world. Celie, her husband Frank and daughter Lulu live in a small town in Alberta and are struggling. With a drought, locusts, hot dry weather and the depression, they are trying to survive and hang onto their farm. Jessie is married and living in Egypt with her husband Aziz and daughter Shani. She is going to medical school and helping her husband run their clinic. With political unrest in the Egypt, the family deals with several issues. Eventually, Jessie ends up working in a hospital in Barcelona during the Spanish Revolution and Shani is in England with her mother. Etta is a widow with her husband dying after falling or being pushed off a cliff in one of the previous books. She has a breakdown and ends up in a Sanitorium. When she is released she abandons her daughter in England with her mother and heads off to Hollywood to be a star. Wow, what an interesting and unlucky family they turn out to be.

I enjoyed this story, but didn’t love it as much as I had hoped, perhaps because I didn’t read the others? The characters were all well-developed and each had a very distinct personality. I really liked Celie. She was a devout catholic and even though her marriage was an unhappy one, she stayed and worked with Frank. She did everything she could to make money and help with the family finances. I understand Frank was dealing with a sense of failure, but I wasn’t a fan. I thought he was weak, and not very kind to Celie. Etta was extremely hard to like. Yes, she had mental health issues, but she was very self-centered and selfish. The way she turned on her mother was terrible. Then there is Jessie. She is an independent woman who wants everyone to be treated equally. This is difficult when you are trying to break into a male dominated profession, as well as doing it in a country that is Muslim. Was what she did to help others worth alienating her daughter? Christina is a piece of work. She has secrets and she has to lie to keep them. It seems everything she does is for her family, but at times I was unsure. The book is set from early 1932 and ends in 1939 when England declares war on Germany. There was a lot going on in this story with 4 POVs, but Adrienne Chinn did a good job keeping them separate and for the most part, the transitions fit together. I was invested in all the storylines, except Etta’s. She just really annoyed me. I found the book interesting and wanted to know what was going to happen to the family. I hope there will be one more tying up all the loose ends and letting us know how the three granddaughters/cousins fare.

Purchase Links: Amazon UK – Amazon.com – Kobo – Apple Books – Barnes & Noble – WH Smith – Google Books

Meet the Author: Adrienne Chinn was born in Grand Falls, Newfoundland, grew up in Quebec, and eventually made her way to London, England after a career as a journalist. In England she worked as a TV and film researcher before embarking on a career as an interior designer, lecturer, and writer. When not up a ladder or at the computer writing, she often can be found rummaging through flea markets or haggling in the Marrakech souk. Her second novel, The English Wife — a timeslip story set in World War II England and contemporary Newfoundland — was published in June 2020 and has become an international bestseller. Her debut novel, The Lost Letter, was published by Avon Books UK in 2019. Love in a Time of War, the first in a series of four books in The Three Fry Sisters series, was published in February 2022. The second in the series, The Paris Sister, was published in February 2023, and the third book in the series, In the Shadow of War, was published in March 2024.

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