In 2017, heavily pregnant (and newly single, since her boyfriend unexpectedly came out as gay) Rachel Taylor is called home to the New Forest as her mother Jane is dying. Rachel and her mother have never been close - there’s always been a distance between them, for some reason - but she’s her mum, after all. But the long-kept secret which Rachel discovers after her mother’s death will turn her world upside down.

Nearly forty years earlier in Oldham, teenage Shirley Burke lives in the shadow of her beautiful older sister Josie. When a married man takes an interest in her at a Butlins holiday camp, it feels like a new life is opening up for Shirley. But the relationship will lead her down some desperate paths and what Shirley does on the day of the Royal Wedding in 1981 will echo down the decades.

Clearly the lives of the two women are inextricably connected in some way, but how?

I love Jonathan Harvey’s books, which are full of humour, warmth and brilliant (mainly female) characters. The Years She Stole is no exception and Jonathan (a Coronation Street writer, by the way) is particularly strong on the voices of the working class northern characters. (Something which, having myself grown up in Lancashire around the same time as Shirley and co, I can appreciate.)

Not all the characters are likeable. In fact a lot of them aren’t at all, and behave in appalling ways. But this doesn’t make the story any less engagingly readable.

A great read with an element of mystery. All the way through I knew there were connections between the characters which I was missing - I just couldn’t figure out what they were. I got there in the end - just.

Thanks for the opportunity to read and review!