A Sea of Stars

Mellie doesn't want romance. Or really, she doesn't think she'll get friendship let alone romance, so it's better to tell herself she doesn't want it. Tom thinks he'll never find love, or a real friend, because all the would-be prospects are scared off by the stigma of his last name and family. So when an anonymous morale-boosting letter campaign begins, who should end up paired together but Mellie and Tom, who form a strong friendship and fall in love... with every letter.

The only thing that saved this from being utterly all too convenient was that Mellie's letter is originally thrown away by some disgusted man who scoffs at her desire for friendship, rather than romance, from the letter campaign. Tom immediately perks up and picks her letter out of the trash, responding nearly as fast as he can grab a pen. Now after some time, roughly 100 pages, Mellie is transferred to Tom's location, and she instantly figures out that her pen pal, Ernest, is really Tom. Tom, however, is stuck for 75% of the book attempting to "stay true" to Annie, whom he has come to love through their letters, and trying to suppress his attraction towards Mellie, the flight nurse, never realizing that they are, in fact, the same person.

Meanwhile, Mellie is trying to juggle her growing, and also decaying, friendships with the other flight nurses, some of whom are very sweet, or at least try to be(Georgie, Rose, and Kay), and some of whom are conniving and back-stabbing(Alice and Vera).

Come the moment, roughly 400 pages in, when "Annie" gives in to "Ernest's" pleas that they tell each other their names, etc. WARNING: OOEY GOOEY MUSH FEST. My goodness. The book started to get sticky, there was so much sap oozing from the pages. So that wasn't handled as well as it could have been. Tom was just way too...unbelievable. And announcing that you will be proposing marriage as soon as "she's ready" didn't seem like the right thing to say at that point in time. Sometimes you feel like a couple has gotten to that point, no matter how much time has actually elapsed, and then there are some couples that simply don't feel ready. Tom and Mellie were just such a couple. Irregardless, the setting of the story was great and everything seemed historically accurate, though I have but limited knowledge, but I thought the pacing of the book and the writing of the romance, most especially it's culmination, dragged the story down a bit.