Zoom of the 1920s: The Radio

Radio Girls was written by Sarah Jane-Stratford in 2016 about the ‘20s. It’s kind of weird that I have to specify that I mean the 1900s now. It is a Y/A historical fiction novel. The story centers around Maisie, a meek Canadian-American girl who moved to London to make enough money to escape from poverty. She gets a job at a business for the radio, a sweeping new sensation. The business is new and exciting, where Maisie meets new friends in her extraordinary coworkers, and gains self-confidence in her rising ambitions.

Radio Girls had interesting female characters that would 100% pass the Bechdel Test. My personal favorite character was Maisie’s boss, Hilda Matheson, an eccentrically sophisticated woman who practically runs the entire radio business. I thought that Maisie’s struggle with her self-image relating to her poverty was a very well-done theme throughout the book. My favorite part about the book was the words that Stratford used. There were a lot of really nice-sounding words stuck between the digital pages- because-all-the-libraries-are-closed of the book. Overall, however, this book was not my cup of coffee.

I can never get into historical fiction (even if it is amidst my favorite of the 1900s decades) and the story was quite uneventful. It was very hard to get sucked into the story due to the slow pace. For that, I can’t give Radio Girls as high a score as I usually do for my book and movie reviews. I’d give this novel a 6/10 for a story that could not get me interested. This story might be suited better for people who like fiction based during historical events. All-in-all, I think that I’d prefer a book that I can really be absorbed into, especially now with so much more free time to read something new.