WELCOME back to the entertaining fortunes and misfortunes of Elaine Everest’s ‘family’ of devoted and dedicated store staff who have become like friends to an army of avid readers.
This wonderfully nostalgic Woolies series, which has brought new life and love for the famous stores which once graced almost every high street in the country, has taken us through the trials, tribulations and triumphs of a group of hard-working women and their boss Betty Billington at the Kentish town of Erith during the turbulent years of the Second World War.
When the long years of conflict finally ended in Everest’s (pictured below) fourth book, A Gift from Woolworths, her plan was to make it the girls’ last chapter but she was so inundated by readers begging to find out what happened next that she happily returned to familiar territory in her fifth book, Wedding Bells for Woolworths. And after a much-loved prequel, A Mother Forever, charting the early life of favourite character Ruby Caselton, and an exciting seventh instalment in which we met a new generation of Woolworths Girls, Everest bounces back with her eighth amazing Woolworths saga.
After losing her beloved fiancé at Ypres in 1917, 17-year-old Elizabeth (Betty) Billington faces a lonely future estranged from her upper-class parents due to her association with Charlie Sayers and his working-class family.
No longer able to live under her parents’ roof, Betty is taken in by Charlie’s father and escapes the suffocating demands of her parents. But Betty soon learns all too well about the realities of life after an accident at the Woolwich Arsenal munitions works, and gains strength and independence from her experiences.
Spotting an advertisement for a job at Woolworths nearby, Betty begins a new and rewarding career, even if it means starting at the bottom of the employment ladder in the well-known store. Soon, her work journey leads her to Ramsgate in Kent to work in a newly built store and with it the chance of marriage, but can she ever forget Charlie and the promise she made to him?
With its enchanting mix of drama, romance, friendship and family, and lots of twists and turns to enjoy along the way, this is an enthralling account of the early life of one of Everest’s best-loved Woolworths girls and another uplifting read from a master storyteller.
(Pan, paperback, £7.99)
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