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    Dream When You're Feeling Blue: A Novel
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    Dream When You're Feeling Blue: A Novel
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    Dream When You're Feeling Blue: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    Dream When You're Feeling Blue: A Novel

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Berg takes us to Chicago at the time of World War II in this wonderful story about three sisters, their lively Irish family, and the men they love.

    As the novel opens, Kitty and Louise Heaney say good-bye to their boyfriends Julian and Michael, who are going to fight overseas. On the domestic front, meat is rationed, children participate in metal drives, and Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller play music that offers hope and lifts spirits. For Kitty, a confident, headstrong young woman, the departure of her boyfriend and the lessons she learns about love, resilience, and war will bring a surprise and uncover a secret, and will lead her to a radical action on behalf of those she loves that will change the Heaney family forever. The lifelong consequences of the choices the sisters make are at the heart of this superb novel about the power of love and the enduring strength of family.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMay 1, 2007
    ISBN9780739325476
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Dream When You're Feeling Blue

    3.5/5

    325 ratings41 reviews

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    • 4/5
      What an amazing novel! Berg's writing talents have always left me speechless when I finish a book, but this one takes the cake. Set during World War II, we live life among the Heaney family. Three sisters write daily letters to soldiers - both theirs and ones they've only danced with, to keep morale up during the war. Some parts of the story are predictable, and the surprise ending throws you for a loop, but the descriptions are very vivid and the whole story is accurately researched - it is a must-read!
    • 3/5
      This book was fine. It tells the story of an Irish-American family living in Chicago during World War II. It's essentially a novel of the homefront, and in parts, it was really engaging. But in others, it was heavy-handed and awkward, and I found the ending just so odd and off-putting, that I finished it dissatisfied. Overall, though, it's not a bad read. And it's another hardcover off my shelf that I can now purge :)
    • 5/5
      My books clubs author read for the month of December is Elizabeth Berg so I selected this title and got it on loan from my library.You see. I adore Big Band music and when I close my eyes I can imagine an orchestra playing many songs from this era... including the title of this read.When you read throughout history, it seems in times of trouble, regretful longings go hand in hand and in the mix nostalgia forms or maybe it is the other way around. In this beautiful read we have three sisters in the Irish Heaney family, whom nightly write to soldiers who are fighting overseas in WWII.There's bobbins pins and flirting on streetcars. There's USO Centers and Bob Hope radio skits. And, then there's the heart-wrenching reminder of walls draped with the American flag. Fast forward many years later to 2006. As this story closes, you have the lead character believing that some people don't give a dam about her generation, which was 'Long Ago and Far Away', so what better thing to do than 'Dream When You're Feeling Blue.'Reviewed for Net Galley
    • 3/5
      Interesting book with some good perspective on WWII and how children were "forced" to feel guilty about buying gum rather than war bonds, writing letters to soldiers each night, etc. BUT--the ending was the WORST!!!!! Absolutely did not make sense at all and made you feel that Kitty really did make one too many sacrifices and was it worth it in the long run.
    • 2/5
      love war story - kind of bummed at the endingListened on audio read by author good
    • 4/5
      Dream When You're Feeling Blue is a story about three sisters doing their best to survive being left at home during World War II. Kitty, the eldest, writes to her steady boyfriend, Julian, while her sister Louise writes to Julian's best friend Michael, who proposed just as he was leaving for the Army. And their youngest sister, Tish, writes to just about every gentleman she meets at the USO dances she loves. Kitty struggles with both her devotion to Julian and her decision to work at a defense job helping to assemble airplanes as everyone at home struggles to support the war effort.I have to say, I really enjoyed this one. It's a light read, but it's a glimpse into what wartime looked like for those who weren't on the front lines. All of Kitty's family members are affected in their own way, and the stories told here remind me of those I've heard in person about coping during the war. Kitty is an independent little thing, and her struggles to find herself and determine how she wants to live her life really strike home with me.I have to mention the ending, though: you're either going to love it or hate it, because it comes out of nowhere. It definitely didn't register the first time through, and I had to go back and re-read the last two chapters several times before it sunk in. Having read other reviews, I think I'm in the minority in my appreciation of the ending -- some have mentioned that they believe the last two chapters are out of character for Kitty, but I do think it follows what Berg intended.
    • 4/5
      Dream When You're Feeling Blue is a story about three sisters doing their best to survive being left at home during World War II. Kitty, the eldest, writes to her steady boyfriend, Julian, while her sister Louise writes to Julian's best friend Michael, who proposed just as he was leaving for the Army. And their youngest sister, Tish, writes to just about every gentleman she meets at the USO dances she loves. Kitty struggles with both her devotion to Julian and her decision to work at a defense job helping to assemble airplanes as everyone at home struggles to support the war effort.I have to say, I really enjoyed this one. It's a light read, but it's a glimpse into what wartime looked like for those who weren't on the front lines. All of Kitty's family members are affected in their own way, and the stories told here remind me of those I've heard in person about coping during the war. Kitty is an independent little thing, and her struggles to find herself and determine how she wants to live her life really strike home with me.I have to mention the ending, though: you're either going to love it or hate it, because it comes out of nowhere. It definitely didn't register the first time through, and I had to go back and re-read the last two chapters several times before it sunk in. Having read other reviews, I think I'm in the minority in my appreciation of the ending -- some have mentioned that they believe the last two chapters are out of character for Kitty, but I do think it follows what Berg intended.
    • 4/5
      A delightful, easy read, touching and homey. I loved it, even though I wanted to shake Kitty once in a while.
    • 4/5
      I found this to be quite a good book, despite not being particularly interested in life in war-time America. Berg's Heaney family seems to be largely realistic representations and as such provided quite a bit of interest to this reader. I think the book was probably well researched - perhaps too well - at times it seemed as though we were being given a history lesson! I continue to enjoy Ms Berg's reading and I always take the audiobook option. In this book she even did Irish and English accents, with the Irish voice being the more believable.
    • 3/5
      Book on CD read by the author.2.5 ** From the book jacket: Berg takes us to Chicago at the time of World War II in this story about three sisters, their lively Irish family, and the men they love. As the novel opens, Kitty and Louise Heaney say good-bye to their boyfriends Julian and Michael, who are going to fight overseas. On the domestic front … the Heaney sisters sit at their kitchen table every evening to write letters – Louise to her fiancé, Kitty to the man she wishes fervently would propose, and [youngest sister] Tish to an ever changing group of men she meets at USO dances. In the letters the sisters send and receive are intimate glimpses of life both on the battlefront and at home. … The lifelong consequences of the choices the sisters make are at the heart of this suprb novel about the power of love and the enduring strength of family.My reactionsIt started out okay, got very interesting in the middle and then completely lost credulity in the last two chapters. Lost a whole star there.I have to say that what I most enjoyed about this novel was the look at everyday life on the domestic front during this very trying time in history. I especially liked the way Berg painted Kitty’s own awakening to her true ambitions and goals in life, and how she talked about the way that the roles of women in America were forever being changed by the requirements of war. I also really enjoyed the strong family dynamics in the Heaney family – mother Margaret, father Frank, and younger brothers all added layers of nuance to the central story of the three Heaney sisters. Berg narrated the audio version herself. She does a credible job, but she should really let a professional voice artist read her books.
    • 2/5
      This was a 3-4 star book until the last 5%. I was enjoying it. It was a pleasant read, it was a nice story, a little predictable, and then all the sudden the one sister's fiance is marrying the the other sister? there was a single line lead up. there was a lame wrap up. The ending was HORRIBLE! it was like someone said "no you can't go over 306 pages. that's it." 50 more pages would have given it some context, some idea how it happened. Instead it left me feeling annoyed that I could have been reading something else.
    • 3/5
      this filled the bill for some light summer entertainment, although I found the audio a bit whiny and phony at first, but then perhaps Kitty was just really that shallow.
    • 3/5
      An endearing story about a Chicago family during WWII. It primarily follows three sisters. It gives very detailed information about the period and the reactions to the war from both home and abroad. Couldn't help but shed a tear at the end.
    • 4/5
      I came across this book in the library and after reading the book summary I decided to read it. The book takes place during World War II and it shows the lives of a family during the war. It particularly shows the lives of the three daughters, Kitty, Tish, and Louise. There are a couple twists and turns throughout this book and that is what made me love it. At the end the book shows where the characters are in the year 2006, and I found myself upset with where some of the characters were but then I realized that for the book to be what it was that it had to end that way. I was fond of Kitty because she seemed like the one that I would be friends with and also because my family calls my sister Kitty. I would recommend this book to those interested in WWII and to women in general. This book made me want to read more fiction on WWII.
    • 4/5
      i really enjoyed this book. a novel about family set in chicago in the midst of ww2. it was a moving ode to the lifestyle of the 1940's, the ways in which people came together on the homefront to support the men overseas, the joy of writing letters to sweethearts and the agony of waiting for them to come home.the writing was really wonderful and the characters were well-developed and rich. my only complaint (and this is why the book gets four instead of five stars) was the ending. i'm not unhappy with how it ended, per se, but with how the ending was written. the ending felt rushed. the pace of the book up to that point had been leisurely and the stories complex, then all of the sudden the book was ending and major things weren't really explained. i felt that a little more time with the ending would have made this an even more powerful book.i still liked it, though, and would highly recommend it.
    • 3/5
      "Dream When You're Feeling Blue," set during World War II, is at its core, a story of family. The three Heaney sisters spend their days going to dances, helping the war effort, and writing to their soldier boyfriends, fiancees, and crushes. Kitty overcomes her vanity and decides to help as a mechanic on airplanes, all the while confused about her boyfriend Julian, who is overseas. Louise is happily engaged to her fiancee Michael, but must deal with some very hard things in his absence. The youngest, Tish, is forever flirting with new men in uniform and writes to dozens of boys, even though the only one who she really wants is already taken.This book was average - the Heaney sisters were likable, but I never really felt that I had fully gotten to know them. I constantly found myself comparing this book to "Little Women," and it was certainly that atmosphere that Berg was trying to write here. There were many similarities, but the lack of depth to the family relationships, as well as a lack of events, made the story fall a bit flat.Not very much happened in this story - there were dances that the girls went to, and they surely wrote a lot of letters (which never really did anything for the plot), and love interests go through different stages, new crushes emerge, and various other forms of young love.There were quite a lot of scenes where members of the family were just talking, or even squabbling. Realistic home life, to be sure, but the warmth and coziness that the author seemed to be trying so hard to exude just didn't ever get through to me. It was as if she were trying to make minor characters more noticeable by always having them say sweet, cute, or meaningful things. For some reason, it just didn't work for me.Perhaps with strong characters, this book could have been amazing. However, without them, there isn't much to it. This is World War II - surely she could have thought of something that could happen! And yet, if someone asked what the book was about, I'd have to say "Well... There are these girls. And, well, um, that's about it."I am giving it 3 stars because, even though I wouldn't recommend it, it wasn't that bad. Most of the time, it was enjoyable light reading. Kitty was an insightful, funny character, and I loved all of the 1940's dialogue and slang that the author threw in.The last few chapters of the book were the strongest, though I had guessed early on that that particular character would die. The final chapter, which takes us beyond World War II and into present times, shows an eighty year old Kitty, and what happened to her. I wish that I hadn't read it, because I was very disappointed. Was the author trying to write a sad ending or a happy one? I really couldn't tell. This is a sweet story, but if you're looking for a sister story, I'd advise you to just stick with the classic "Little Women." And as for finding other, better World War II books - well, there's no shortage of those!
    • 1/5
      ** spoiler alert ** I almost bought this book, but I waited and checked it out at the library instead - and boy, am I glad that I didn't waste money buying it! The sad part was that I really liked the book until the atrocious last two chapters that were tacked on at the end. The last two chapters ruined the book completely.I was unaware that a man was a possession to be given away at will to another person. It was laughably bad that she could just give away the love of her life to her sister without any explanation at all and everything would turn out just fine, and it ruined the entire story for me. Not only did it cheapen what Kitty and Hank had, but it also cheapened what Louise and Michael had too. What an incredibly shallow, STUPID ending to an otherwise decent book.
    • 3/5
      In spite of the serious WWII background, this was a light read. Character development was fairly weak and some of the 1940's trivial details (Duz Soap, etc.) felt plunked there for no other reason. The ending was somewhat predictable but still quite bizarre. Not a bad book, but just OK.
    • 5/5
      loved, loved this book and want to read more like it.
    • 3/5
      The story of three sisters from the Chicago area during WWII. The book covers their own relationship and those of the men in their lives. Felt that this was probably an accurate portrayal of the times. Berg always interests me, anyway.
    • 2/5
      Weak characters, clunky story-telling and a totally unnecessary twist at the end made this book a disappointment for me. There were moments that I really enjoyed and I looked forward to the developing story line between two characters, but the lack of character development interrupted the natural progression of the plot in the end. The entire thing felt forced and awkward.
    • 4/5
      A charming book that takes the reader back to the 40s.
    • 5/5
      This is a wonderful nostalgic love story. I was so sad when the story ended and how it ended, I wanted it to go on forever. Love and turmoile during WWll....loved it!!!!!!
    • 4/5
      A fictional account of a close-knit Catholic family living in Chicago during WWII. The narrator is Kitty, the eldest and prettiest of three sisters (also have two brothers). Kitty & Louise are engaged to soldiers and write them everyday and look forward to seeing how many letters they receive. The patriotism and sacrifices of everyone on the homefront is a striking contrast to our current war. Berg's writing is usually sentimental & nostalgic & this book is no exception. She also did a lot of research & it shows. I enjoyed reading about our country in this time period showing an average family. There is an unexpected ending to the story.
    • 2/5
      I have read almost all of Berg's novels and was excited to pull this one off the new book shelf of my library. It was definitely not up to her usual standards.This book is the WWII tale of two sisters, Louise and Kitty, and their loves and lives during this turbulent time in our country. While I greatly enjoyed the day to day information about these sisters, and felt it was probably a very accurate protrayal of life in that time, the characters did not remain true throughout the book. I would be interested in seeing a different ending for this novel! Berg could have done much better and changing the last two chapters to remain true to her characters' personalities would have made this a much better book.
    • 5/5
      I know a lot of people have not rated this one very high, but I enjoyed it thorougly. For me it was a way to learn about a generation that my grandparents were in. I had heard the stories of the war, but not the story of what it was like at home. How the whole country bonded together in a common cause. How people made sacrifices for our boys who were overseas. What a wonderful tale of this looking through the eyes of three sisters. I love watching how Kitty grows in this book. I think this book was a lot about sacrifice and truly loving someone, so I don't find the end that unbelievable, but maybe that is me - I always hope for the best. Also I don't mind the end because it is a book. I don't read books for believability (though I think this one does have it) I read them for entertainment and this one was very entertaining. I actually listened to it on tape a nd the author does a wonderful job of reading this.So it will stand out in my mind for quite awhile as a touching and wonderful story.
    • 4/5
      Nice read, stayed up w-a-y too late last night finishing. Good example of how historical fiction can give us a true glimpse of how people lived through a tragic time period.Tthe women in this book remind me of aunts I have who lived in such a way and who are the people they are now because of their sacrifice and decisions. Highly recommend.
    • 3/5
      Not one of her best. In spite of the subject matter, a light read.
    • 5/5
      ... I kept my promise to Michael...Marvelous book, very well written and I loved the ending. Mrs Berg knew right from the beginning of this book, how it would end. She is a remarkable writter!
    • 3/5
      Loved this book until the end and then it made me so mad! It was a terrible way to end it!