Review: The Women in Black by Madeleine St John

The Women in Black

by Madeleine St John

Publisher: Scribner

Pages: 224

Format: eARC

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  Sydney in the late 1950s. On the second floor of the famous F.G. Goode department store, in Ladies' Cocktail Frocks, the women in black are girding themselves for the Christmas rush. Lisa is the new Sales Assistant (Temporary). Across the floor and beyond the arch, she is about to meet the glamorous Continental refugee, Magda, guardian of the rose-pink cave of Model Gowns.


Kritters Thoughts:  Set in Australia in the late 1950s in a department store where ladies make up the majority of the workforce.  This little book rotates between characters and their different storylines and what is impacting them as they go through the holiday season.

I liked this book, but didn't love it.  I think the lack of length stunted the story and with more pages the story archs could have felt more fluid and full.  It felt as though just as I was getting involved with one of the characters and their storyline, the chapter would stop and jump to someone else and with the overall book length it felt as though a lot was crammed into just a few pages.  

I wish this book had more because I think it needed more especially as the author tried to give a large cast a lot of time to each character and there wasn't one that was solely focused on with a large secondary cast.  I wanted and wished for more with this one.


Rating: enjoyable, but didn't leave me wanting more

Ebook 2019 Challenge: 69 out of 100


Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from Netgalley.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.