Holiday at the Dew Drop Inn
ISBN: 9780241355879
Description
Kate loves the country so much that kind Mr and Mrs Wildgoose invite her to spend the whole of the summer holidays with them at The Dew Drop Inn, so she says good-bye to her mother and father and her six brothers and sisters, and sets off by train with a shiny black mackintosh and some brand-new gum-boots. The Wildgooses are just as kind as she remembered them, and there is a big excitement for her when The Dew Drop Inn is to take part in the concert and flower show. Kate is kept busy learning how to make cakes and jam, discovering where all sorts of wild flowers grow, and writing an essay. But the most difficult thing of all is deciding which of her poems to recite at the concert.
Reviewed on 3rd September 2023
The third book in the One End Street series is one that I didn’t know existed when I read the other two as a child, and so is entirely new to me on this read through.
It focuses on the character and setting that quickly became a favourite in the previous book, as Kate goes on holiday for the whole summer. However I don’t think it does it as compellingly as the previous book managed.
One thing I particularly noticed in this book was the length of the paragraphs. I can only assume that this is an effect of when it was written - but there are frequently paragraphs taking up almost an entire page, and that’s a lot of dense, small writing, to have in one go. Similarly the book, and the individual chapters, feel longer than in the first two books.
The story is generally good fun. It’s interesting to see some returning characters, and some actual characters arcs for, well at least one of them, which I think sets this a bit apart from the previous novels.
As with the previous novel, there’s one small moment of legacy racism, which probably would be entirely commonplace at the time the story is set, although I’m not sure that would be fair to say of the time this novel was actually written. It’s more subtle this time round, but still jarring to a modern reader.
