What the critics had to say:

Crisply written and dramatic... In The Mood is compelling fiction... Bloom’s novel conjured a period with great intimacy and realism, yet wears its research lightly – detail plays second fiddle to credible, deeply human characters, and the prose remains taut and evocative throughout. Comparisons to Ruth Park are inevitable – and with more novels set in the 20th century to come, it will be intriguing to see where Bloom goes next.
Cameron Woodhead, The Age

Poignant, evocative and engaging.
Instyle Magazine

Heartwrenching
Readers Digest

Sensitive writing tells of this couple’s problems.
Woman’s Day

This is an elegant novel.
Vogue

You’ll love it if you loved Atonement.
Cosmopolitan Magazine

Engaging, heartwrenching.
Catherine Ellwood, Sunday Tasmanian

‘Gould’s belief that the artistic imagination answers a need for explanations more ample and exact holds true for wartime fiction such as Laura Bloom’s In The Mood. ... The value of Bloom’s approach lies in her sensitive inquiry into Catherine’s dilemma as the war ends. ... The book is a tribute to the experience of women such as Catherine who suffered social opprobrium and veteran anger. ...She explores those recesses of 20th-century history with conviction.’
Stella Clarke, The Australian Literary Review

‘At a time when our soldiers are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, In The Mood is a reminder of the reality of war – the battles scenes are closely based on first hand oral history accounts – and the fact that for soldiers and the people they come home to, it never ends.
Senior Lifestyle South Coast

This is a heartwrenching, evocative novel about love and work, fidelity, betrayal and intimacy.
Mid West Times, West Australia

This is a beautifully written and compelling story steeped in the post war period.
Country News, Victoria

What - a few of - the readers had to say:

Hi Laura. I heard you speak at the Byron Bay Writers Festival and could not wait to read "In the Mood" -have just finished it and LOVED IT!!!! You are such an accomplished and sensitive writer. It is a beautifully crafted novel. Can't wait to read your next one. Please hurry up and finish it. All the best, Rosie

Author: Vince Smith
Text: I have just finished "In the Mood" which I thoroughly enjoyed and am now passing on to my wife for her female viewpoint. I found it very moving and an interesting attempt to get inside the psyche of people forced to undergo the disruption of war.I, too, love the music of the era and was attracted to buy the novel by the title as I recognized the Glenn Miller reference. I think you should be very proud of your efforts with this novel and look forward to your next, as I am sure you will be seething with ideas for another!

Author: Emmajo Knapp
Text: I loved "In the Mood" so very much! It was a novel of terse dimensions and tremendous insight. The characters were very real and viscerally pitted against and at times with, one another.
I loved the depth of the novel and the story was magnificent. Well done to Laura on a marvellous achievement. I didn't want it to end.

“In the Mood” is an extraordinary novel about the second world war and its aftermath, about Australia during a period of great upheaval, and, most importantly, about a woman (Catherine) and a man (Robert) struggling to reawaken their intimacy after being separated by the war and by all that has happened that they cannot share.
Like Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall,” “In the Mood” takes a well known historical period and, through the author’s great skill in bringing characters to life and disrupting clichés, offers a deeply original and intelligent account of life that is hauntingly universal. It is the first time I have ever read a book about the second world war where I felt like I could truly empathise with the female character, so often in any story about war women stoically stay behind, “keeping the home fires burning” and are portrayed either as victims or as jolly good time girls. Catherine is a remarkable character: she is sharp, vulnerable and clever and her journey and her choices stayed with me long after I finished reading.
But the novel isn’t just Catherine’s story, it also gives equal footing to Robert’s story of war in New Guinea and of trying to reintegrate into the world of work, marriage and domesticity. He dreamed of home and of Catherine the whole time he was away, but how can he be the same person after what he has done and seen? And Catherine has so clearly changed too, but how and why? Like a marriage, “In the Mood” weaves the stories of both characters together in a dynamic exploration of the different kinds of warfare engaged in by men and by women, ambition and its social constraints in Australia and the battles and compromises of survival and intimacy.
I can’t remember reading a novel that has moved me as deeply as “In the Mood” and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Lisa Brockwell