Juliet Ashton is a writer living in post-WWII London. She has lost her flat due to a bomb and is looking for her next literary inspiration when fate intervenes. She is sent a letter from Dawsey Adams of the island Guernsey who owns a book that used to belong to her and is asking her more about that author. As Juliet learns more about Dawsey, she realizes that Guernsey was under occupation during the war and the islanders had quite a difficult time during those years. Juliet asks Dawsey if he could get other islanders to write her about their experiences during the occupation and she slowly comes up with the idea for her book.

This book is written entirely as letters between the different characters. I usually find that this formatting doesn't give the reader enough detail but in this book that wasn't the case. One complaint I do have about the formatting of this book is that the book started out with letters to and from Juliet. By the end of the book it was only letters from Juliet. I believe there was still value in reading the letters written to Juliet and I missed those at the end of the book.

Given the formatting, I was surprised I enjoyed this as much as I did. I enjoyed the stories that the islanders gave about the occupation and how both the good and bad side was portrayed. There was a fair amount going on the book but everything wrapped up quite nicely by the end.