I found this book to be boring. I think there was a lot of potential, however, it just droned on and on. I read it till the end hoping that the book would redeem itself but even the ending lacked a worthwhile outcome.

I enjoyed this story of a child evacuated to an historic home in Yorkshire in 1939. Longing and loss...

Discover: A child fleeing World War II London discovers a world of unspoken love and loss. "Like 2011 Best Picture Oscar winner The King's Speech, Rosie Alison's The Very Thought of You is so absorbing that you don't realize how little has happened until after you've finished reading. "That is, how little has happened on the surface. Like most humans, Alison's characters eat and sleep, fight and make love, take trips and suffer accidents. But book's real action is psychological: battles are fought in the characters' minds and hearts, their actions betraying very little of their inner struggles. "The slight action of The Very Thought of You unfolds at Ashton House, a Yorkshire estate converted to a boarding school as housing for London children fleeing the Blitz. Its narrative switches among the perspectives of several well-drawn characters, with just enough time spent on each one's thoughts for them to be sympathetic and not tiresome. Eight-year-old Anna Sands is the common thread, pulling the reader through Mrs. Ashton's unfulfilled desire to have a child, Mr. Ashton's deep regrets over both his inability to walk and his wife's longing, and his unfolding attachment to schoolteacher Ruth Weir. "Alison deftly handles love, regret and loss, creating a web of dramatic irony all the more impressive because it's never obvious. The result is like a watercolor half filled in, a psychological landscape made more real by the spaces left blank. The Very Thought of You is a fine first novel from a keenly perceptive writer." --Dani Alexis Ryskamp, blogger at Intractable Bibliophilia