The Ship of Brides by Jojo Moyes

The year is 1946, and all over the world, young women are crossing the seas in the thousands en route to the men they married in wartime - and an unknown future. In Sydney, Australia, four women join 650 other brides on an extraordinary voyage to England, aboard the HMS Victoria, which also carries not just arms and aircraft but 1,000 naval officers and men. Rules of honour, duty, and separation are strictly enforced, from the aircraft carrier's captain down to the lowliest young stoker. But the men and the brides will find their lives intertwined in ways the Navy could never have imagined.

 After all the hype surrounding her novel, Me before you, I thought I would read this book that has been on my bookshelves for an unknown amount of time.  It just never jumped out at me before so I thought I would dive right on in.

It started quite slowly and I was wondering where is was going to go.  The style started off feeling a bit strange to me but it all started to make sense about a third of the way into the book once all the threads of the characters started coming together.  

I must admit to guessing what the secrets were before they were revealed but this did not ruin the story for me as I liked the way the author wrote them into the story.  While being predictable the author made them interesting by revealing them in different and fairly unique ways.

I usually hate happy endings but I was thrilled by one aspect of the ending of this book - don't worry I won't give it away.  

A great introduction to a new author to me and one that means I will definitely go on to try out some of her other books.  4 out of 5 for me, with one star being dropped as I felt it was about 75 to 100 pages too long, in my opinion but worth a read.