Vivacious Alice Lacey couldn't be more different from her sister-in-law, the bitter, ambitious Cora. Alice is married to John, Cora to his hapless younger brother Billie. Both women give birth to sons on one chaotic night in 1940. It is Cora's jealousy and resentment that prompts her to swap her puny baby for Alice's beautiful son. With Alice's marriage in tatters, because the disfigured John rejects her, unable to believe that she still loves him when he looks like a monster, she borrows money from Cora in order to purchase the lease of the tiny hairdresser where she works. Alice is talented; the business thrives and a chain of salons becomes Laceys of Liverpool. The relationships between the cousins Cormac and Maurice, their parents, Alice's three girls and their eventual husbands and children, combine to give a unique picture of Liverpool in the last sixty years of the twentieth century.
I have now read all of Maureen Lee's books, and every one is fantastic. As soon as you pick the book up you forget about the outside world, because they are really hard to to put down. The stories are brilliant, you end up going through all the emotions with the characters because they are brought to life so well. Enjoy the read.
