Secrets of the Lavender Girls by Kate Thompson - #TuesdayTeaser

Hello and welcome to this week's Tuesday Teaser. The place where we take a sneaky peek at a book that has caught my eye.

This week we are looking at Secrets of the Lavender Girls by Kate Thompson.

Kate is an award winning journalist with years of experience working in print media, and is published in several newspapers and magazines.

She is the author of several other novels including Secrets of the Singer Girls  ( you can read my review by clicking here. ) Secrets of the Lavender Girls is the second in her Home Front series. Other novels include The Wedding Girls, Secrets of the Sewing Bee and The Stepney Doorstep Society, all of which are on my 'To Read' list.

She now lives in Sunbury with her husband, two young sons and a soppy Jack Russell called Twinkle.

The Blurb

Stratford, 1943.

World War Two is still raging across Europe. But for the Lavender Girls, the workers at the Yardley cosmetics factory in East London, there are even more challenges on the home front.

Esther, newly married, is learning to juggle life as a working woman with her duties as a wife and homemaker. And she must find a way to help her adopted family on the Shoot, who are battling their own hidden demons . . .

Headstrong Patsy, a new recruit at the Yardley factory, has a double life that takes her from the East End lipstick belt by day to the stage in the West End at night. But will she be able to keep her secrets hidden from her controlling mother, Queenie?

For bubbly Lou, a forbidden love forces her to choose between family loyalty and a chance at true happiness. Can she be brave enough to forge her own path in the chaos of a war?

One thing is certain: the Lavender Girls need one another more than ever if they are going to survive . . .

In the Beginning...

Prologue - Wednesday 20th June 1917

Queen Alexandra's open landau slides along the wide elegant thoroughfares of Knightsbridge, past the cheering crowds waving paper and silk roses in celebration of the annual Rose Day procession. Thousands have been bought by the time Her Majesty's carriage sets out from Marlborough House, raising funds for the sick and needy.

Their petals drift through the blue skies, getting caught in the smart hats of the gentry. They coat men, women and children up from the provinces, and skitter through the London parks. Smiling flower sellers in bonnets throng the crowds, pinning roses to sailors on leave, children's straw boaters and washerwomen's aprons. Hawkers on bikes sell ices and sarsaparilla to keep the onlookers cool. It is quite the spectacle of pomp and pageantry.

But further east, through the city, past the Aldgate pump and into the guts of Whitechapel, a very different procession winds its way through the cobbled quarters. Here the streets are narrow and the buildings blackened. The stench of horseshit curls through the hot air on a gusting westerly. Every window has its blinds pulled closed, even in the middle of the day.

Residents of Poplar and the surrounding boroughs have taken to the streets in their thousands, filling the highways, in some places so thick it slows the progress of the fifteen tiny coffins, each one covered in a blanket of pink and white blossom.

This part of the East End has never been so quiet. Even the endlessly toiling docks have stopped work for the day. Grief has wrapped its bony fingers around the whole community.

Usually it's trucks, loaded down with goods, which rattle their way from the docks along the East India Dock Road. Today, it's bodies.

I am already completely hooked, just from reading this short beginning. Are you already a fan of Kate Thompson?