The Silent Stars Go By by Sally Nicholls

Title: The Silent Stars Go By

Author: Sally Nicholls

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: Andersen Press

Published: 3^rd November 2021

Format: Paperback

Pages: 240

Price: $18.99

Synopsis: Three years ago, Margot’s life was turned upside down when her fiancé, Harry, went missing in action on the Western Front. Worse, she was left with a devastating secret which threatened to ruin her life and destroy the reputation of her family. As a respectable vicar’s daughter, Margot has had to guard that secret with great care ever since, no matter how much pain it causes her.

Now it’s Christmas 1919, and Margot’s family is gathering back home in the vicarage for the first time since the end of the Great War. And miraculously Harry has returned, hoping to see Margot and rekindle their romance. Can Margot ever reveal the shocking truth to the only man she has ever loved?

~*~

It’s Christmas, 1919 – World War One is over, the Spanish Flu has run its course, and Margot Allen is heading back home from Durham, where she has been working. Like many, her life has changed during the course of the war. Yet in 1916, things changed dramatically for Margot. Her fiancé, Harry went missing in action on the Western Front, and she had to leave with a secret that could have ruined her life and destroyed her family’s reputation – a son who is being raised by her parents as her brother, following time in a mother and baby’s home. And she hasn’t been home since the end of the war.

Yet Margot’s return home for Christmas – the first coming together of people for a grand get together since the end of the Great War is a mix of feelings. She gets to see James and the rest of her family – and by some miracle, Harry, who has returned from his time as a prisoner. He’s three years older than Margot, and wants to rekindle their romance – but Margot worries that her secret will mean they can’t – and what will revealing this secret mean?

The Silent Stars Go By is a story of love and loss, and acceptance of the things that we cannot change. For Margot, finding out she was pregnant just after or around the time Harry went missing, and not knowing whether he was alive or dead, was something that she couldn’t avoid – she couldn’t tell him. So the secret lingered for years as the war dragged on, and of course, the solution of going from mother and baby home to work and having her family – her parents – adopt James and raise him as their own appeared to work, though I got the sense that Margot was more isolated because of the pregnancy from her parents than her other siblings who didn’t know the truth. Margot is caught between wanting to love Harry, and wanting him to know the truth, loyalty to her family, and her conflicting feelings about wanting James back amidst revelations surrounding adoption that a good friend only a few years older than her tells her about during the course of the book.

As the story unravels, it is deceptively simple in its complexity, as the themes are tough and complex, and reveal ways of thinking that would be unheard of now in many ways, but told in a simple way for a young adult audience looking for a good book and story. And this is also a good short book – there have been calls for shorter middle grade and young adult recently, and this one I think fits the bill. It’s under 300 pages, but has deep, meaningful and complex themes that will appeal to young adults – love, war, romance and secrets, whilst using accessible language that is both modern yet also suits the historical setting of the book. It also touches on the experiences of returning soldiers – physical and mental or emotional scars and injuries, as well as the challenges of daily life that all families faced during the early years of the twentieth century, particularly in light of the Great War and the large numbers of men who died, leaving women to take on those jobs where they could, or forge new careers in a modern world that was starkly different from the one that England had been in the decades leading up to the war. The war didn’t care about class or anything else – it just took, and Margot was one of the lucky ones whose love returned home.

This is the kind of book that doesn’t have a set ending, but rather a sense of hope that what Margot dreams of may come true one day. That even if things don’t work out exactly as she thought, there is still the promise of good things to come. And throughout the book, I came to cheer on the Allen siblings, who were at ease with each other to share dreams, and where the older brother, Stephen, also returned from the war, is jovial with his sisters and comes across as being the kind of person who would hopefully support them in whatever they pursue. I liked that there is a sense of being able to imagine Margot’s future with this book, and I hope that other readers will enjoy this one too.