Book Review: Moral Fibre

Welcome to my book tour stop for Moral Fibre: A Bomber Pilot’s Story by Helena P. Shrader. The novel is a new historical fiction story taking place during WWII. The novel follows Christopher “Kit” Moran a RAF bomber pilot in training after he was almost labeled LMF or lacking moral fibre.

“Lacking Moral Fibre” was a term used by the Royal Air Force to punish those pilots who refused to fly operations, basically calling them cowards. It was an extremely stigmatizing term. Kit had been a flight engineer and was flying an operation with his pilot and best friend, Don, and their squadron. Disaster strikes leaving a few wounded and/or dead including Don. Within hours of the tragedy, he was expected to go back out on another operation. Refusing to do so led Kit to have to be mentally evaluated and possibly labeled LMF. The doctor refused to label him as such and he was given the option to train as a pilot.

The novel follows Kit as he goes for training and begins flying his own operations, picking out his own squadron, forming relationships with his fellow RAF members (I don’t think members is the right word but I’m not sure what to call them. I don’t think soldiers is right either? You get what I mean.) While all this is going on, he has kept in touch with Don’s fiancee, Georgina – a young school teacher. Initially keeping in touch through letters because they were both mourning Don, it eventually turns into love. This is a difficult situation for Georgina because while she has feelings for Kit, she feels like she is betraying Don even though he is gone. While Kit waits for Georgina to navigate her feelings, he is also trying to be the best bomber pilot he can be to make Don proud while he works through his survivor’s guilt and hopes that none of his crew find out about his almost LMF status. There’s also a little thing going on called WWII so Kit is working through all of this while also flying raids to cripple Hitler’s forces.

I really enjoyed this novel. I really liked Kit and Georgina and could understand everything they were feeling and thinking. I like historical fiction and since I haven’t read much that tells the perspective of WWII from the British side, I found it really interesting. I loved all the detail on the flight operations. I felt like I was actually on the plane with Kit and his crew. The book was a little drawn out in parts and then the ending seemed so quick! I would’ve loved some more detail at the end, especially from Kit’s perspective because the last bit didn’t show what he was thinking or feeling really which is a shame because we had heard so much from his perspective for so much of the novel.

Overall, I really enjoyed the novel and I loved that one of the overarching takeaways from the novel was to not let fear hold you back from something that will bring you joy and happiness – especially fear of something that only might happen.

There are more book blog tour stops for this novel. See the graphic below for info!