Things a Bright Girl Can Do by Sally Nicholls

Synopsis (from Goodreads)

Pages: 432

Publisher: Anderson

Released: 7th of September 2017 

Through rallies and marches, in polite drawing rooms and freezing prison cells and the poverty-stricken slums of the East End, three courageous young women join the fight for the vote.

Evelyn is seventeen, and though she is rich and clever, she may never be allowed to follow her older brother to university. Enraged that she is expected to marry her childhood sweetheart rather than be educated, she joins the Suffragettes, and vows to pay the ultimate price for women's freedom.

May is fifteen, and already sworn to the cause, though she and her fellow Suffragists refuse violence. When she meets Nell, a girl who's grown up in hardship, she sees a kindred spirit. Together and in love, the two girls start to dream of a world where all kinds of women have their place.

But the fight for freedom will challenge Evelyn, May and Nell more than they ever could believe. As war looms, just how much are they willing to sacrifice?

What I Have to Say 

This book was so amazing and great to read but I don't really know what to say about it. I liked the characters a lot and the plot. The history was awesome and I learned a lot of stuff that I didn't know. It's an era of history that I'm really interested in, both the stuff with the suffragettes and with the First World War, so it's great to read about it from different perspectives and find out stuff I didn't already know. 

The peace stuff from May was really interesting. I had no idea how many women were working so hard to try and end the war. The whole peace conference was something that I knew nothing about so it was great to read that. 

I enjoyed Nell as well. It was great to see the idea of gender and homosexuality being questioned in a historical fiction book, because so many people pretend that this stuff didn't exist back then even though it's well documented. 

I loved the cover with the black girl on it, so I was sad that there was no mention that any of the girls were black in the book. I would have been so interested to see the issue of race and how it was treated in England back then because I only know some stuff about race and suffragettes in America and even that I don't know much about. 

This is definitely a great feminist read for anyone interested in women and history. Read it and get ready to feel powerful. 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Anderson for providing me with this copy for review.