A Mother’s Blessing

A captivating saga set on the eve of WW2 in Liverpool, where life is about to change forever for one girl.

When her mother died when she was just seven years old, Molly helped her grief-stricken father look after their tiny home in their tight-knit Liverpool street. Though she’s always felt in the shadow of her sister June, as WWII breaks out, Molly sees a chance to do her bit for her home town.

Enlisting in the Women's Voluntary Service, Molly is terrified of what lies ahead, but she also meets Edie and lives for the time they spend together. In their snatched moments when Edie is on leave from the Navy, the two of them excitedly plan their future.

After tragedy strikes, Molly’s happiness is snatched away, but she knows there is more at stake that one broken heart. Molly wants to be brave like her mother would have wanted her to be – can she find the courage to carry on for the sake of her country and her family?

Reviews

Praise for Annie Groves:

‘An engrossing story.’ My Weekly

‘A stirring and heartrending family saga…Against a backdrop of change when the suffragette movement was coming to the fore, the choices and dreams of a generation of women combine to create this passionate story.’ Liverpool Daily Post

‘Heartwrenching and uplifting in equal measure – a tragic indictment of what can happen when you swap passion for duty. Roll on the sequel!’ Take a Break

‘Exceptionally good within this area, well written and beautifully developed characters.’ Sarah Broadhurst

About the author

Annie Groves was born and lived in the north-west of England all of her life. She was the author of the Pride family series, Ellie Pride, Connie’s Courage and Hettie of Hope Street, for which she drew upon her own family’s history, picked up from listening to her grandmother’s stories when she was a child. Her next set of novels was the World War II series Goodnight Sweetheart, Some Sunny Day, The Grafton Girls and As Time Goes By. These were followed by the Campion series, Across the Mersey, Daughters of Liverpool, The Heart of the Family, Where the Heart Is and When the Lights Go on Again, which are also based on recollections from members of her family, who come from the city of Liverpool. My Sweet Valentine follows on from Home for Christmas and London Belles and is the third in this series, which introduces a set of glorious characters living in Article Row in Holborn.
Annie Groves, whose real name was Penny Halsall, also wrote under the name of Penny Jordan and was an international bestselling author of over 170 novels with sales of over 84 million copies.
Sadly, Penny Halsall died in 2011. She left a wonderful legacy of heart-warming novels for many more fans to discover and she will be greatly missed by all who knew her.
The final books in the Article Row series, Only a Mother Knows and A Christmas Promise, will be published posthumously in 2013.