Debutantes – Cora Harrison

It is the mid twenties and four girls have desires on what they want to happen to them. It is a time of change.

Violent the eldest is desperate to be presented at her season. However family finances mean that it is looking even less likely.

Daisy has ambitions to be something in films and spends a lot of time filming her family and bringing all these shots together to make the film that will mean she is discovered.

Poppy (Daisy’s non-identical twin)  is embracing the Jazz Age and being a débutante is the furthest thing from her mind. Making music on her clarinet with a group of friends at the family’s chauffeur cottage is where you are most likely to find her.

Rose is the youngest and looks up to all her sisters and involves them all in her fictious stories and short pithy newspaper headlines which punctuate their life.

The family is living in a house which is starting to fail just like their family finances, their mother is dead and they only have their father, an aunt and a few family retainers to keep up some sort of society appearance.

They make their own entertainment, and when the house throws up secrets, in the shape of a letter hidden in a wooden box and then a trunk full of clothes in the attic, belonging to an Elaine Carruthers a name the four girls are not familiar with. It falls to Daisy to start digging around to see if she can find anything out – it could always make a film. But she wants to direct not to be the star. All the while young Rose, punctuates it with wonderful eye grabbing headlines which was one of my favourite parts of the book.

This book is pitched as a young adult book but it is not particularly ‘young’ in its topics or language so it should not deter adults from picking it up and reading it. Ideal for those who are fans of such programmes as Downton Abbey, historical fiction, the differences in those ‘upstairs’ , the servants and the ilk. It has everything that you would expect and want in such a book; a strict aunt, a family bereavement, a big house with secrets, sibling rivalry, references to society of the time but also how women were changing at the time and not everyone wanted to be a débutante. Changing times.

This is the first in a new series by Cora Harrison, and I enjoyed it that I will want to see what happens to the sisters and the direction that Harrison will take.

Thank you to Amazon Vine for giving me the opportunity to read this book. 

I have read one of Cora Harrison’s previous novels I was Jane Austen’s Best Friend but not the second which I must rectify. 

I suppose I should say something about the fact that they are children’s books, but to be honest I don’t know what there is to say. Other than perhaps as I directed in my review (see link above) if you want to start children on preparation for something more substantial then this a good book to start with.