In San Francisco in 2019, Willow and her mother Millie take a DNA test that has baffling news. Willow travels to England to learn more about her grandmother's past, and the story of Maggie Wyndham starts to unfold. During World War II, Maggie fell in love with one man, and then another ... and did secret war work that put her life in danger. As Willow unfolds the story of Maggie's life, she finds her own life changing too ... with new purpose, new work, and even a new romance.

I wanted to read The Sweetheart Locket because of the World War II setting. I love novels from this time period.

This is a historical novel with a dual storyline. There is the story of Willow and her mother Millie in 2019, in both San Francisco (their home) and England (where Millie was born). There is also the story of Maggie, Millie's mother, beginning in 1939 in England. It is a complex story with lots of movement back and forth in time. Readers meet the three generations of women in the family and also Maggie's friends, and the men who are central to their lives.

I loved this book from the start -- both Maggie and Willow, the central characters, are so likable and have such interesting lives. Maggie's life is actually extraordinary, with Resistance work and a tangled personal life.

The Sweetheart Locket is an engrossing book - I barely put it down during the time I was reading it, and I planned my time around more reading! I really felt like I got to know the characters because they were so well drawn. The historical details were also beautifully told. I loved the way little haunting details from World War II would show up unexpectedly in present day life as well. Maggie's story - and the secrets of her life - was unveiled slowly through the course of the book.

I cannot recommend this novel highly enough. It is one of my favorite reads this year, and I plan to look for more books by this author.

The Sweetheart Locket has a dual timeline and tells two stories - one about Willow in 2019 and the other about her grandmother, Maggie, in the 1940s. Both women are trying to find out who they really are.
I found the parts set during the war really interesting. I didn't know much about the SOE and I enjoyed learning about that. I liked the way the mystery played out as the book went on, with chapters from the past making sense of things they found in the present.

This is a charming read. Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

It takes just one decision, one incident for life to completely change. When you think back to what your options were and how different life would have been if you went with another decision, it is a bit scary to know that you probably would not have the people in your life that you do right now. A DNA test is what sets things in motion for Willow and in turn, her mother, Camilla Fox-Willoughby.

"In wartime, life sped up and was lived in snatches and you had to make the most of what you had, when you had it."

On the brink of war, Margaret Wyndham decides to stay back in England instead of going back home to Canada to do her part for the country. While she finds love on the way, the kind of life she had through the war is a secret to the world up until her grand-daughter, Willow, comes looking for family history about seven decades later.

What follows then is the unfurling of a great story of the women in war and their hardships along with how they had to cope with the consequences of war having had to live through it. Beyond languages, countries and religious beliefs, a story that connects generations of women and brings to light their life, The Sweetheart Locket is an amazing story seamlessly integrating fact and fiction. Alternating perspectives of Margaret during the war and Willow in the 21st century lends the best kind of closure that such stories can ever hope for.

Among multiple stark differences between the timelines, one that stood out was this: "The night was chilly and bright with stars. Bombing weather." We are truly lucky to be able to think of a moonlit night as beautiful or romantic as opposed to something destructive.

Thank you @netgalley for a complimentary advance copy. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Favorite Quotes:

In wartime, life sped up and was lived in snatches and you had to make the most of what you had, when you had it.

My mother says, “experience is what we call the accumulation of our mistakes.”

Her cousin was a young soul. Since childhood, Saffy had darted through life like a dragonfly in a summer meadow, landing in pleasant places and, apart from her parents’ tragic deaths which she’d been too young to remember, her way untouched by shadows.

Something the war had also taught her was that the truth wasn’t always best. Rather, it was elastic and sometimes you had to lie to save yourself and those you cared about.

Family wasn’t always the people you were connected to by blood, but also those who came into your life by chance and stayed by choice.

My Review:

This was an absorbing, heart-rending, and intriguing dual-timeline and multiple POV narratives between family members in WWII England and modern times. The storylines were original, engaging, well contrived, historically and culturally accurate, and laced with modern-day family tensions and 1940's wartime dangers, and a sense of impending peril.

Unexpected revelations, family secrets, cultural concerns, clandestine operations, and identity issues were insightfully and thoughtfully explored in both timelines. I cared about the characters and was riddled with curiosity about what was to become of them.

The writing has emotive, perceptive, easy to fall into, and kept a smooth scroll of sharp visuals sparking across my gray matter. Ms. Gilroy is not only an agile storyteller but a wily one full of surprises.

This is a well written duel timeline storyset between England and California. It's a historical but also a family drama. Willow a ghost writer heading to England to do research. Her mother grew up in England but never shared anything about those times. Willow decides to try and research her Grandmother also while there as only knows her thru the letters they exchanged while she was growing up. So with her letters and Gran's Sweetheart locket she heads out. Beautiful story, I learned alot of interesting history of the women of that time.
Thank you to Publisher,Author, and Net Galley for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I love reading Historical Fiction stories about WW2 England. My relatives won't talk about it so I turn to books. I learn so much from each story, especially when I take the time to research some of what the author has written. The first thing I looked up was "sweetheart locket." I had no idea how amazing and popular they were during the war as a statement from a soldier to his love.

Unlocking the story of the locket was an adventure in reading. I learned more about secret agents, family conflicts, survival and loss than I had ever known before. The author hooked me by allowing me to discover family secrets alongside Willow who had inherited a Sweetheart Locket from her Grandmother, Maggie. Her curiosity, peaked by a DNA test, has her mixing business with pleasure in London. I, as a reader, was Willow's shadow on her road to discovery. What a rush!!

Willow never met her grandmother, only sharing letters sent to California from England. She didn't know Maggie's story. Willow, nor her mother, had any idea of how important her grandmother had been during the war. Jen Gilroy tells a story of World War 2 through their discoveries. I felt the emotions of the characters, the struggles, the heartbreak, the frustrations. As the author points out, Brits in times of struggle, they continue "looking at and being in the world and a way of keeping going through good times and bad." They didn't talk about things, they just moved on. Maggie had to move on from so much. She had to be a very strong character to survive her ordeals.

I have always wondered how the people kept going. Bombs destroyed so much. So many lives were lost, military and civilian. Innocence was lost. The author gave such great insight into how they carried on. "Even in the darkest days of war, if you lost your dreams, you also lost your hope so in away you lost everything."

I hope you read Sweetheart Locket and discover how much was lost. I hope you read Sweetheart Locket and learn how at times the goal was to make it one more minute, one more hour. Maggie had to survive, or everything was for nothing. But when she succeeded she couldn't speak of it. The Official Secrets Act demanded silence.

Through the words of authors, such as Jen Gilroy, the lives of the members of the SOE (Special Operations Executive) are being shared. The past needs to be shared. With knowledge we can make sure that organizations such as the SOE will never be needed again.

The Sweetheart Locket is a dual-timeline story about one family's secrets spanning over the decades.

In 2019, San Francisco native Willow takes a DNA test, thinking it will be little more than a fun Christmas gift from her cousin. However, the surprising results of the test throw everything Willow thought she knew about her family into question.

With her mum staying suspiciously silent and her English grandmother long since laid to rest, Willow has a lot of questions but very few answers. Taking matters into her own hands, she plans a trip to England to follow in her grandmother's footsteps in an attempt to uncover the secrets of the past once and for all.

The story changes between Willow's adventures in the present-day, and her grandmother's life during the war. At a time when everyone had to keep secrets just to survive, Maggie thought little of keeping herself to herself - at work, at home, and in her personal life. However, as the war continued on, she would soon be faced with some very difficult decisions...

Both parts of the story were interesting to read about, though Maggie's life in wartime London was rather more engaging than her granddaughter's chapters. The book does not shy away from the horrors of war and even now, decades later, it's hard to imagine just how much real people like Maggie sacrificed for their countries. Above all, The Sweetheart Locket is a heartfelt story of love, family, and determination.

The Sweetheart Locket is a gripping and heartfelt blend of historical fiction and contemporary family drama. The stage is set when Willow and her mother Millie receive surprising results from a DNA test, sending Willow to England to learn more about her grandmother’s past. The story is told in dual timelines, as we are transported to 1939 London, where we meet Maggie, and learn her wartime story of courage, determination, and love. As Willow learns more about their family in England, she uncovers secrets that are both shocking and sad. At the same time, Willow comes to terms with her own choices, and after confronting her past, can she find a way forward with her future? The author really pulled me into the story, with multilayered characters whose lives were forever altered by wartime.

I love Jen Gilroy’s contemporary romances but this is her first foray into a dual timeline and I enjoyed it just as much. It was refreshing to have a modern main character who isn’t British and it brought an interesting take to the way the story was told, for example Willow’s lack of assumed knowledge about her grandmother’s World War Two story.
Her grandmother, Maggie, wasn’t British either but a Canadian who decided to stay in England to help fight the Nazi threat rather than go home, and this added an extra layer too. Her initial sense of isolation meant that she forged strong bonds and the stories of her closest friends’ wars were skilfully wound through her own, making the novel all the more compelling.
Although there are romances running through each timeline, other important relationships are explored. Willow’s difficult one with her mother Millie added depth to the story and for me it was one of the most important to be resolved, and there was a beautiful echo in Millie’s relationship with Maggie too.
The choices that the women (and men) of each generation have to make are vivid yet relatable and once I had settled into the book I found it very hard to put down.