Girls on the Line

<b> Thanks to Netgalley for an e-Arc in exchange for an honest review.</b> <br /> Oh my this was so good! You know what? I slept on my review and I bumped this up to a 5 star rating because it <b> recounted a little known history of WWI telephone operators, featured a take charge female protagonist, and was just an all around fantastic story.</b> Not to mention that it included terrific lines like this one;<i> I refuse to marry a man who spends his life in a dark room, longing for the sun but lacking the backbone to stand and open a window</i> GASP! So utterly gorgeous and perhaps a nominee for <b> best line of 2018 uttered by a female character </b> <br /><br />I feel like I should write a humongous book review, but I would rather you scuttle over to NETGALLEY and check it out. So worth it!

Wowza!! I love historical fiction and Girls on the Line was amazing! I was instantly pulled into the captivating story of Ruby and the Hello Girls of World War One. I enjoyed reading and learning about a little known part of history. Aimie K. Runyan did her research and it shows! A must read for historical fiction fans!!

Such an excellent book!! Not enough stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ to give! Excellent balance of war and personal / relationship. Loved the ending. Cried a couple of times and got goosebumps. If you love historical fiction, pick this one up. It'll stay with me a long while and I feel confident saying this is my first favorite of 2019!

Excellent story. well researched and well written. The characters are believable and the setting so realistic it is almost painful. Runyan has written a story that captures the human side of war.

Aimie Runyan is becoming a favorite author of mine, mainly because she writes about historical fiction (which is my favorite genre) and she picks topics I have never heard of before. After reading her "Daughters of the Night Sky" about the Night Witches of the Red Army during WWII, I could not wait for her next book to come out. I was so excited to see Girls on the Line come out. This was definitely a 4.5 star read.<br /><br />Girls on the Line is about the Hello Girls during World War I. The story follows Ruby Wagner, a telephone operator with Pennsylvania Bell (which is the company my husband's grandmother worked for as an operator). When tragedy strikes her family, despite her mother not wanting her to work at all because women of their status don't do that. Ruby applies to be a Hello Girl with the US Army on the front in France. Their job was to connect the front with the rest of the world, but had to have telephone operator experience and be fluent in French. Along the way she meets, Andrew Carrigan, a medic from Brooklyn, who captures her heart even though she is already engaged to a Main Line elite. It follows her time supervising operators in France, an outbreak of the Spanish Flu in which she helped nurse soldiers, and finding the reason she enlisted. Ruby is sent to the front line in the final days of the war, ordered to Germany to work in the telephone office there, but it takes months before she is granted discharged to go home for a family emergency. Once she returns, she finds just how much privilege is important to her mother, the people they hang around, and also her former fiance. But privilege does not top love. <br /><br />This was a great read about something I had never heard of in the war efforts. But I am finding more and more reads about World War I, which are fascinating. The Hello Girls were given the same treatment as men, they had to have physicals, were subject to the same regulations, and wore uniforms. They were part of the US Army, but due to a technicality in their contracts because it said service "MEN", not "PERSON", they were considered "civilian" employees of the US Army. Once the war was over they were not entitled to any benefits, medals, or medical care - unlike the women serving in the Marines or Navy. Because of that the Hello Girls did not get military recognition until 1978 (60 years after the end of the war and the Hello Girls' fight for equal status of their male Army counterparts) after Congress approved veteran status and honorable discharges for the remaining Hello Girls. <br /><br />Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for this advanced copy. I was not required to give a positive review, all opinions are my own.

I love reading historical fiction when I am given not only a fantastic story but have the opportunity to learn about something that I knew little or nothing about. Aimee Runyan has done considerable research into the Army Signal Corps during WWI and their need for women operators to go overseas to help with the communications of the war. This was at a time in history that women's main goal was to marry well and spend their days taking care of their husbands and families. It was because of women who were willing to step outside society's norms that women finally got the opportunity to vote. <br /><br />Ruby was 24 years old. As a member of high society in Philadelphia, she was engaged to another prominent member of society. While he was away in the war, she took a job for the telephone company. She loved working and when there was an opportunity for the best of the best to get a job with the Army as a member of the Signal corps, she applied and was accepted much to her parents' dismay. After training, Ruby is sent to war torn France to work in communications. Not only is she totally out of her comfort zone but she has to prove her worth as a member of the army to the male members of the Army. Will she be able to return to her society life or will her experiences as a woman who helped win the war send her on another path when she returns home?<br /><br />This is a wonderful well written, well researched novel about the unknown role of women in WWI. It's about love and family and friendship and how women's roles were changing during this time. <br /><br />Thanks to the author for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

Girls on the Line is an emotionally captivating book about a group of courageous, groundbreaking women....the women operators who served this country as members of the Army Signal Corps during The Great War. With great attention to detail, the author has brought to life a subject I knew little about, in a story brimming with heart, compassion, and humanity. Ruby’s story touched my heart as she was transformed by world events as well as her own determination and bravery. This book is about conflicts beyond those fought on the battlefield, as the world was undergoing changes along with Ruby...old vs new, traditional vs progressive, privilege and advantage vs ambition and hard work, passion vs complacency. I highly recommend this compelling book that celebrates these unknown heroes who were instrumental in bringing an end to a horrific war along with the other women of that era who fought for the right to be heard.

Let me preface this review with this: I absolutely adore this specific brand of historical fiction where I get to see women's contributions to wars past (whether based in fact or history bending alternate timelines).<br /><br />But this book fell short of the mark for me where it mattered: the war itself.<br /><br />Our protagonist Ruby Wagner is a member of Philadelphia high society with a mother stuck in the ways of the Victorian era. Her mother has even gone so far as to arrange a marriage for her daughter to a currently deployed fellow high society man in order to cement their place within the elite and their social circle. Her father is a bit more lenient with his baby girl, but still is not entirely on board with the surge of women looking to make their own way in the world.<br /><br />Ruby is okay with her lot in life at first. She's content to sit in her mother's sewing circles preparing socks and rolling bandages for the boys overseas as their fellow high society matrons titter on about local gossip and the progress of the war—but all of that changes when they receive a telegram stating that her brother Francis has been killed in action during the first American battle of the war.<br /><br />It's this event that spurs Ruby on to take her chances with applying to the Army's Signal Corps when an errant ad in the paper calls for women to take up their patriotic duty and volunteer to run the switchboards overseas. As an experienced operator at Philadelphia's own switchboards, the choice was clear for her. She would continue where her brother left off and ensure the war was ended that much sooner, sparing other families the agony her own had gone through with the death of Francis.<br /><br />A compelling idea for a novel, yes? I certainly thought so. And I absolutely loved the lead up to Ruby's deployment. Her suffering through high society, the testing she had to get through in order to be accepted as a switchboard operator for the army, and even seeing where she wound up being deployed to. I thought it was fascinating, especially seeing as I never even knew these women existed. All we really hear about in reference to both WWI and WWII when it comes to women's involvement is their time as nurses or perhaps administrative staff. These women were sometimes on the front lines, connecting the soldiers in the trenches to the brass to receive orders and give updates. They slept in their barracks and dealt with the same threat of gas and bombing and shelling as the soldiers did, and yet I'd never heard anything about them.<br /><br />A shame I was only given the most shallow look at their duties.<br /><br />The author apparently did painstaking research in reference to this book. She spoke to the lawyer that helped these women win their legal battle to be recognized as real soldiers who deserved all of the same benefits the men received after their service (which was not won until 1979. Ah, America.), to the descendants of these amazing women, and even visited symposiums and archives.<br /><br />And yet, for all of that research, I did not get the one thing I wanted out of this book: the true horror and trauma of the War to End All Wars.<br /><br />I never once got to see the girls dealing with the actual calls they were connecting throughout their service. I would just be told that the lines were busy, that they had been on shift for fourteen hours, that they slept for two to four hours at a time, that they could hear shells and gunfire in the distance.<br /><br />It was all very passive, the author instead deciding to focus on fairly bland conversations in between the girls and Ruby and her love interest (we'll get to him in a bit). I'm all for building relationships in your story, especially meaningful relationships between women, but if you're going to write a novel about the war that harkened in the age of modern warfare, the war that left its soldiers so grotesquely scarred both physically and mentally, you have to address that. You cannot glaze over it in favor of conversations about how bad the food from the mess is.<br /><br />And, might I add, I had no idea how important the concept of "Chekov's Gun" was before I read this book. In fact, I found the concept a bit stupid. <br /><br />In case you are unaware of the concept, this is the explanation I got from the website <a href="https://www.nownovel.com/blog/use-chekhovs-gun/" rel="nofollow noopener">Now Novel</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote> <i>'Chekhov's Gun' is a concept that describes how every element of a story should contribute to the whole. It comes from Anton Chekhov's famous book writing advice: 'If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired.'</i> </blockquote><br /><br />C'mon. <i>Every</i> element of a story should contribute to the whole? That sounds a bit like overkill. As a writer, I can say that not <i>every</i> detail I include is super important to the plot, but more for mood and character establishment. Surely this is outdated advice.<br /><br />Hoo, boy. I was wrong. I finally understand this concept fully.<br /><br />So, once Ruby was transferred from a post far behind enemy lines (and filled with... a lot of fairly boring day to day actives and only one instance of a bomb drill that amounted to nothing), I got pumped. <i>Finally</i>, the author is going to give me what I came here for. We're going to be right by the fighting. Finally Ruby will witness the horror of this war and give me the gut punch I've been waiting for.<br /><br />Ruby gets there and is given some new supplies, including a gas mask. Probably the most infamous piece of equipment to come out of World War I. We all know of the horror of gas attacks and the blood and gore and absolutely agony riddled deaths it inflicted upon the soldiers. Surely, Ruby will bear witness to one of these attacks and what it does to those who do not have a gas mask or do not properly secure it to their face.<br /><br />But... that never happened. Ruby gets the mask, looks at it once and muses about it a bit, then it's put under her bed, never to be mentioned again.<br /><br />Uh. All right.<br /><br />And then there is an instance where the girls light some candles after the call for lights out comes down, and their lights are noticed in the window, forcing Ruby's love interest, the medic Andrew Carrigan (I'm getting to him, I swear), to come running to give the girls a talking to about the importance of lights out.<br /><br />He is so frazzled at the idea that Ruby could have been put in danger, that he gives her a small pistol to defend herself with. "<i>Finally</i>," I sigh. "Maybe Ruby is going to be forced to fend off a German troop that manages to break through the lines. Maybe a German spy accosts her in order to attempt to get the ever changing American codes out of her and she will have to shoot him to defend herself."<br /><br />Nope. Nadda. The gun is never mentioned again. Pretty on the nose with the Chekov's gun argument, huh?<br /><br />I could not believe this. Not only was I not given even the slightest peak at how Ruby would handle the stress of being the middle man for the troops in the midst of an important battle, but you don't even incorporate the very real dangers of being on the front lines after giving me these two key props? I felt cheated in the worst way, and the book officially just became a day-to-day account of a late 1910's women at her stressful job.<br /><br />Ruby wasn't even fazed by the constant barrage of mortor fire and machine guns. Except for a few throwaway lines about how the noises were there and she had grown used to them, they really had no affect on our main character. To the point that I even forgot about it.<br /><br />I also don't understand how the ladies, when walking around in mud with their pretty skirted uniforms, didn't face the same threat of trench foot as the men did when left without clean socks and the ability to leave your feet uncovered and out of the moisture.<br /><br />Like, I don't care if the girls didn't mention these things in their journals or letters that the author had access to. I don't care if the official archives assured us that they never had to worry about gas attacks or shelling or trench foot—in order to get the true horrors of the World War I battlefield across, these things absolutely should have been included in the narrative. If that meant cutting out thirty pages of the girls going through yet another uneventful half-shift at HQ, then for the love of god it should have been done.<br /><br />The fact that the main love interest was a medic (I'M GETTING TO HIM NEXT I PROMISE) and I was only shown like one single instance of him getting a little stressed out by the horror and blood and gore he'd seen is absolutely a travesty. Medics have arguably the absolute hardest job in the military, especially back then. They were not armed back then. Their one and only job was stabilizing the men so they could either be sent back to the front, sent behind the lines to a hospital (and maybe back home), or just making them relatively comfortable before they died of grievous injuries.<br /><br />I got to see none of this strain on dear Andrew's face or in his overall demeanor. It legitimately makes me angry.<br /><br />Okay, I could go on and on about my gripes with how the war was handled, I should probably talk about other things now.<br /><br />SO! About our dear Lieutenant Andrew Carrigan.<br /><br />I felt none of the romance between Ruby and him, and I'm mad about it.<br /><br />I did not feel any of the spark I think the author wanted me to. He was just as dull as her fiancé Nathaniel (who I pictured to look like Benedict Cumberbatch in <i>War Horse</i> lmao). I felt nothing. Their conversations were stilted and lacked any actual connection—whether platonic or romantic.<br /><br />And I was upset about this!! I was so excited for her to meet a dashing soldier at the front who paled in comparison to the tame, boring man she was betrothed to. And he was a medic at that! I have an incredible soft spot for them since I first saw Eugene Roe in <i>Band of Brothers</i>. I was so excited.<br /><br />But I got nothing. If it wasn't for the fact that author was so clearly forcing them together, I'd have had no idea that they were supposed to become a couple.<br /><br />Also, he was from Brooklyn (Brooklynites represent!!!!) so I feel doubly cheated out of a proper romance with this army medic.<br /><br />There was also a ham-fisted attempt at a German spy narrative where one of the girls had been in love with a German boy whose family decided to move back to Vienna before America entered the war. She wasn't even a German spy! She was just a girl who wanted to know if the boy she loved was still alive!!! So it wound up amounting to absolutely nothing with no real stakes, like quite a lot of things in this book.<br /><br />I just. <i>throttles the air</i> This book had <i>such</i> potential! <i>gestures emphatically upwards toward the block of text above</i> Come on!!!!<br /><br />Anyway, I'm giving this book two stars because I really did enjoy learning about the existence of these girls, and getting even just the barest hint of their duties in a war that history is so determined to pretend they never took part in. And maybe there are people out there who would enjoy this! But it just didn't wind up hitting the mark for me when it came to addressing what this war really did to the body and minds of everyone who served and got caught in the middle of the violence.<br /><br />Anyway, I sure hope that <i>Daughters of the Night Sky</i> by this very same author handles World War II better. Please, God. I don't want to be disappointed again.

This is a wonderful book about Ruby, a young woman who leaves her fiance after her brother is killed fighting in World War I and joins the Army Signal Corps. to serve in war-torn France. It is not only a great story, but you will love learning about the "Hello Girls" the women who served so bravely as switchboard operators during the First World War.

I've written this review for Really Into This<br /><br />Check out all of our reviews at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://reallyintothis.com">https://reallyintothis.com</a><br />Happy Reading, friends!<br /><br />GIRLS ON THE LINE BY AIMIE K. RUNYAN BOOK REVIEW<br />Mom wants a comfy life for her daughter. Too bad her daughter wants more out of life &amp; she isn’t afraid to go out of her comfort zone to find it. Following her heart, Ruby heads to France to help the US in WW I.<br /><br />MEET RUBY<br />First, I need to say I love Ruby. She is strong-willed, determined &amp; so smart. Ruby is one of those rare people who doesn’t tell you how to get the job done. Instead, she shows you. As she puts in her application to be a “Hello Girl” she is fearless against every challenge that comes her way. Although I finished Girls on the Line, I’m not sure I’m ready to let go of Ruby.<br /><br />SERVICE WOMEN<br />Let me tell you, Aimie researched the heck out of Girls on the Line. Reading through her Author’s Note is amazing. A friend sent her an article on the under-celebrated “Hello Girls”. In the 1970’s, an attorney fought for these women to receive benefits and honor for their military service. They fully deserve it.<br /><br />Reading through what their job entails is intense. Imagine receiving a call, connecting the cal and translating it in a different language knowing one mistake could alter the course of the War. Throw in an everchanging system of codes to thwart spies and you’ve got yourself a very stressful work environment. Oh, and the women are working, resting, studying &amp; sleeping- without electricity no less. Don’t get it twisted, these women play a huge role in the War. I’m glad Aimie helps bring their important story to life.<br /> <br />THE VERDICT<br />I am Really Into This book! Ruby is such a fantastic &amp; memorable character. Also, I love stories (especially true!) about badass, strong women who persevere. If you’re a fan of historical fiction &amp; strong women you’re sure to love Girls on the Line.<br /><br />Be sure to check out The Radium Girls by Kate Moore. It’s another tale about undercelebrated women.<br /><br />Special thanks to Aimie K. Runyan for providing our copy in exchange for an honest &amp; fair review.