That Girl
In this captivating story three young Irish women seek to reinvent themselves in swinging 1960s London. After being abruptly jilted, Lara sets out to achieve her dream of designing trendy fashions. Annie is fleeing a tragic, soul-crushing past and hiding a terrible secret. Noreen, rebelling against the narrow conventional life everyone back home envisions for her, craves adventure.
Although the hip culture of the time offers some breakthrough opportunities for Lara and Annie, Noreen soon becomes disappointed. Events do not turn out quite as any of them had expected. These nice Irish Catholic girls are living and working in immediate proximity to gangsters, and the mob boss’s greedy machinations jeopardize Lara’s future. A perfect storm of surprises and trouble hits when people the young women left behind in Ireland come to find them.
An expertly crafted plot makes it difficult to stop reading this novel. All three protagonists grow and arc as a result of their experiences and the memorable secondary characters also wrestle with challenges. The tragic narrative involving Annie plays out authentically, but within the larger frame of a romantic comedy that highlights the resiliency of friendship, the unpredictability of falling in love, and the healing power of both. A very appealing book.
