Customer Reviews

Across the Mersey

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Jean and Vi are twins but they couldn't be any more different. Vi is a married with two spoiled children and lives in Wallasey. Jean lives in Liverpool with her family. When war breaks out cousins Luke and Charlie enlist and Jean's daughter Grace decides to train for a nurse and Vi's daughter Bella decides that she has to get married Alan,a man who Bella believes can raise her social status. On one night Grace meet Seb Atkins, Alan cousin. A romance blooms under the threat of war, but in wartime not everyone will survive.
"Across the Mersey" is the first book in a great series. Ms. Grove give the reader great characters and a great storyline. Any fan of wartime novels will love book Annie Groves books.

This is the first book of a five-book series written about the Campion family in Liverpool beginning at the start of WWII. Jean and Vi are twins. Jean and her family live in what we here in the U.S. would term the "blue-collar" side of the Mersey River, closer to the docks, and Vi and hers live in Wallasey, on the other side of the Mersey, where the more professional/wealthier Liverpudlians live. Vi is a snob and her children reflect her idea that she's better than her "lower-class" sister. Jean is warm and loving and her children reflect their upbringing. We get to know Jean and Vi and their husbands, their younger sister Fran, and all their children. I personally loved Grace and Luke, Jean's two oldest, (Grace's story is prominently featured) but admit I was fascinated with Bella and Charlie, Vi's spoiled rotten two oldest (Bella's story is also prominently featured). The overall story is melodramatic and at times simplistic, but Groves is a magical storyteller who makes you care about the characters and forge an emotional connection to them from page one. Even though, as a writer, I kept seeing plot holes and convenient coincidences, as a reader, those flaws didn't matter and I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. I've ordered all the books in the series and am looking forward to reading the rest. The setting and background of WWII is very well done and felt authentic and real to me. I also felt the facts were well-researched and presented. Highly recommended to all lovers of British fiction and books with a background of WWII.