Wartime Comes to West India Dock Road is installment #2 in a series and follows the lives of Charity and Divya (and community) from the first book.

Wartime Comes to West India Dock Road by Renita D’Silva

Genre/Categories/Setting: Historical Fiction (WWII Home Front), Friendship, Community, London’s East End

***This post contains Amazon Affiliate Links

My Summary:

Thanks #NetGalley @BoldwoodBooks for a complimentary eARC of #WartimeComesToWestIndiaDockRoad upon my request. All opinions are my own.

Wartime Comes to West India Dock Road continues to follow the lives of Charity, a boarding house owner, and Divya, a restaurant owner, as bombs fall on London’s East End. Charity is stressed and exhausted by attending to her sick parents and looking after her three younger brothers. Divya supports her, feeds the community, and writes to her best friend, Jack, and love interest, Raghu. who are both serving in the war.

My Thoughts:

The Home Front

Life on the home front during WWII is an interesting sub-genre for me, and I always wonder how I would have supported the war effort and survived these difficult years. Women supported women, held the community together, stepped up to leadership, and worried about their men.

Diverse Community

If you love diverse stories, you will find a great deal to appreciate in this series. Divya’s Indian food is a favorite in the community, and her restaurant seems to be the favored meeting spot for a colorful cast of characters.

Structure

Most of the story is told from Charity’s and Divya’s perspectives. The majority of Divya’s perspective is told through letters (to her friend and love interest). While I normally love epistolary, it affected the pace of the story as we heard about events after they happened. The letters resulted in a lot of “telling” and we missed out on the first-hand action. It would have been more dynamic to read about events in real time, and then Divya could reflect on the events in her letters. I also noticed that Divya’s letters didn’t have a different voice from the rest of the story. Also, the letters contained detailed conversations between members of the community. It seems that summarizing conversations rather than writing them out might be more engaging. Because a great deal of the story was related through these letters, I would describe the story as quietly told. My observations about the structure are personal preferences.

Content Consideration: war injuries and trauma, racism

Recommending Wartime Comes to West India Dock Road:

Fans of the first installment will enjoy following the characters. While the first book is my favorite of the two (5 stars), I appreciate catching up with our beloved main characters and look forward to book 3..

Related: New Arrivals on West India Dock Road

My Rating: 3.5 Stars

More Information Here

Meet the Author of Wartime Comes to West India Dock Road, Renita D’Silva

Renita D’Silva loves stories both reading and creating them. Wartime Comes To West India Dock Road, the second book in her historical saga series set on West India Dock Road, is out on July 23, 2025. Her books have been translated into several languages. Her short stories have been published in The View from Here, Bartleby Snopes, this zine, Platinum Page, Paragraph Planet, Verve among others, have been nominated for the Pushcart prize, the Best of the Net anthology, shortlisted for the LoveReading Very Short Story award and The Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize and longlisted for the BBC National Short Story award. Her short story, Eavesdropping Shamelessly, is published in the Arts Council England funded Bridges Not Borders anthology of prizewinning stories. Her first psychological thriller, The Neighbours, won the Joffe Books Prize 2023. Her second psychological thriller, The Dream Wedding, is out now.

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QOTD:

Do you love WWII home front stories?

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