Yours from the Tower book review

Yours from the Tower by Sally Nicholls is a young adult historical fiction book that follows three friends who have recently left school and are sharing their lives that are now becoming vastly different in letters to one another.

I really liked how this book was written, the entire story is written as letters which isn’t a style I have read before in a book but it is now a style I want to read more of because of how much I enjoyed it and found it worked to tell the story. Even with it being in letters I felt like I got to know the all three of the girls really well and understand almost all parts of them even if they were hiding things from those they were writing too.

We follow three girls as I have previously mentioned, Tirzah, Sophia and Polly who are all living in different parts of the country and writing letters to each other. I liked cycling between each of their lives and seeing what all of them were doing and what their struggles were. I felt like I got to understand them all well and couldn’t stop reading, looking forward to seeing what would happen next. The letters made it a quick read but that didn’t stop it feeling like it had a good amount of depth.

Tirzah, Sophie and Polly all felt like real people with struggles and their own opinions and seeing their opinions in a historical setting compared to what women and girls have now was a really interesting aspect that I enjoyed. It was cool to see how different the three girls were and how close they were no matter that fact, and in turn how different their lives were by this point in time. I think out of the three Tirzah was probably my favourite, for a few reasons but I did love all three and would love to continue to read their letters if that was ever an option.

Normally I find myself a very plot driven reader however this book isn't super plot driven and I still found myself unable to put it down which is unusual however I think this was helped by the way it was written. I will definitely be reading more written in this style when I can find books written this way. The characters were also a key part of this book and I think if I hadn’t liked them I wouldn’t have enjoyed the book. I need to find more historical fiction that is like this instead of being focused around a key event in history because I really did enjoy it.

This was an easy 4.5 star read that I am so happy to have gotten to and can understand why it has made its way onto the YA Book Prize shortlist. I would definitely recommend it and would read more from Sally Nicholls in the future.

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