It Was ok.

I was halfway through this book before it really caught my interest.

It's about Belinda who lost her fiance in the war and became one of 'the surplus girls' which the world was full of at the time. She works at the mill and lives with her fiance's mother and grandmother. The book starts four years after the war and they are still wearing black and mourning their loss. These women expect Belinda to stay the same way.
She wants to move on. Initially just to wear something with a bit of color but this is regarded as an awful travesty by the two older women.
Her own family live in abject poverty with an absolutely useless father who drags them down more and more as time goes on. Everything gets left to Belinda and she does her best because she loves them in spite of everything.
The whole book was full of doom and gloom and I sometimes found myself having to take a break from it to lift my spirits. There is a bit of light at the end of the tunnel but it's also the end of the book.

I read that it's a series of three but I'm not sure I'll read the others.