The Singleton family from Blackburn spend their 1959 Wakes Week, the local shutdown holiday, in Blackpool, along with plenty of others from their hometown. This story is a week in the company of upwardly mobile housewife Ruth, her husband Jack who is harbouring his own secrets and ambitions, sixteen year old Helen who is impatient to become a youth of the sixties, and seven year old Beth who is recovering from a serious illness and is being very coddled against her will as a result. I loved it.

I found the story absorbing and interesting, full of period colour. The characters are fabulous and I really cared about them. I liked the way the flashbacks were separated completely from the 1959 story. And the integration of I-Spy books (a staple of my 1970s childhood too, and still going strong for my daughter except Big Chief I-Spy of Wigwam-by-the-water has been replaced by Michelin’s Bibendum) is completely brilliant. I rarely read the little chapter heading quotes in books, this book is very much the exception, the I-Spy quotes really made the book.

There are places where the author’s knowledge of Lancashire cotton mills becomes a bit too “look how well I’ve done my research” and there’s an epilogue which was nice but I thought it might have been a stronger book if the future beyond the summer holiday had been left to the reader’s imagination, it would have had less “feel good”-ness about it then though.

I found the book via Goodreads recommendations and will be looking them up again!