The Silent Stars Go By by Sally Nicholls

Seventeen-year-old Margot Allan was a respectable vicar's daughter and madly in love with her fiance Harry. But when Harry was reported Missing in Action from the Western Front, and Margot realised she was expecting his child, there was only one solution she and her family could think of in order to keep that respectability. She gave up James, her baby son, to be adopted by her parents and brought up as her younger brother.
Now two years later the whole family is gathering at the Vicarage for Christmas. It's heartbreaking for Margot being so close to James but unable to tell him who he really is. But on top of that, Harry is also back in the village. Released from captivity in Germany and recuperated from illness, he's come home and wants answers. Why has Margot seemingly broken off their engagement and not replied to his letters? Margot knows she owes him an explanation. But can she really tell him the truth about James?

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You can't tell from this picture, but this is a physically beautiful book. All those leaves are picked out in shiny metallic bronze, and the back cover is a deep blue under bronze leaves - a colour combo I think works really well together.

It's also beautiful inside, of course.

I should have known before I started reading. This is the author of Ways to Live Forever, a book that made me cry for hours the first time I read it and still makes me tear up when I reread. Be prepared going into this.

It reads a little like Enid Blyton, all 'golly' and 'beastly' and 'fearful'. Not twee, at all, just setting a background and immersing us in it. After a while I didn't even notice; I was too absorbed in the story,in Margot's story.

I can't say the ending is happy. But it is, probably, the only ending it could be. And it's so well written. I'll be going back to this book again, I can already tell.

Fantastic.

The Silent Stars Go By publishes on the 5th November, 2020.