Book Review | Radio Girls

It's finally time for another book review... It's taken me a while and I've realised I have loads of draft book reviews waiting to be posted but not fully finished. So I thought I'd get back into the swing of things!

My latest read was Radio Girls by Sarah Jane Stratford, a story based on the BBC in the mid 1920's to early 1930's. I LOVED THIS BOOK! As a complete radio nerd it was great to be submerged into a historical fiction novel of where radio really started to take shape. The story is based around the canadian Maisie Musgrave as she begins working at the BBC. It includes pivotal people from the actual history of the BBC including Lord Reith who played a vital role in the establishing of the BBC and was the first General Manager and Director-General for the corporation. The book also featured Hilda Matherson who was the first director of the Talks department. I loved the history of this book and enjoyed leaving the book to learn the history of the people featured throughout. My only criticism of this book is that it felt so long to read and I spent hours dragging myself through the pages. It's saving grace was that it was interesting to read but it ate up so much time. I'm not sure particularly why I felt like it took long to read, maybe the sheer depth of the book and the detail on every page just made it very difficult to read lots of pages in one go.

I did however enjoy the story line which was well thought out, very detailed and very interesting. The twists and turns had me hooked and I enjoyed going back this book every day. I found myself gasping in places, disgusted with characters and even the way women were treated at the time. I found things shocking but it continued to pull me in the whole way through the book. I enjoyed all the nerdy radio things scattered in the book and loved somewhat of a glimpse back to those times of early radio broadcasting. I was somewhat disappointed with the ending which just fell short of winning me over as there was so much build up in those last 100 pages that I felt somewhat deflated and let down by how everything was resolved. Regardless I would definitely go back to this book again and would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical fiction or is a radio nerd like myself!

Rebecca
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