The Quality Street Girls (Quality Street, Book 1)
As seen:
By Penny Thorpe, and and, Sherry Baines
avg rating
1 review
A delicious and heartwarming novel featuring the girls working at the nation’s favourite wrapped chocolate factory.
At sixteen years old, Irene ‘Reenie’ Calder is leaving school with little in the way of qualifications. She is delighted to land a seasonal job at Mackintosh’s Quality Street factory. Reenie feels like a kid let loose in a sweet shop, but trouble seems to follow her around and it isn’t long before she falls foul of the strict rules. Diana Moore runs the Toffee Penny line and has worked hard to secure her position. Beautiful and smart, the other girls in the factory are in awe of her, but Diana has a dark secret which if exposed, could cost her not only her job at the factory but her reputation as well. When a terrible accident puts supply of Quality Street at risk, Reenie has a chance to prove herself. The shops are full of Quality Street lovers who have saved up all year for their must-have Christmas treat. Reenie and Diana know that everything rests on them, if they are to give everyone a Christmas to remember… TweetReviews
The Quality Street Girls by Penny Thorpe
Everyone agreed that this was a very suitable book to read over the Christmas period although not everyone enjoyed it as much as they had hoped. Those who did not like it thought the writing was not as good as it might have been and that there were just too many characters with too many different story lines to make a cohesive whole. None of the characters were particularly likeable and some thought that the portrayal of the role of women at that period of time was perhaps exaggerated. However, we all felt that the depiction of the living and social conditions prevailing at the time in which it was set was realistic and well described and we enjoyed the part at the end where the author displayed her knowledge of the real history of Quality Street confectionery itself. It was easy enough to read overall although it would not encourage us to read any other work by this author. We gave it a 6 out of 10.
