Book - Mrs Boots of Pelham St by Deborah Carr

I’d wanted to read this book for ages and eventually was able to reserve it from the library. My first time in the library in almost 3 years!

Business has long been an intriguing subject for me so throw a woman leader into the equation and can resist.

Florence Boot is a great character and worthy of this book and so much more. The book chronicles how she managed to work alongside her husband while raising their 3 kids. This is in the late 19th century as the book opens in 1891 Florence insisted on having a creche in her office, working long hours whilst also running her home. With the help of a small domestic army which got bigger with each house and a shared secretary with the husband. Her motivation is to be able to help people, women in particular who don't have her privilege. Much is made of that from the annual factory day out to the seaside to the getting involved with personal matters of the entry-level staff. This bit I found quite hard to fathom when there were layers of management between the owner and the staff across factories and 250 stores but these are different times I guess.

I found there to be a lot of repeats in the book. Just how many times do we need to how much she loves her husband in every chapter or that she loves her kids and has to name them each time she mentions them individually (this happened twice in the space of 3 pages!)

I got a sense this was intended to bracket this as a romance novel rather than the historical one it is.

There was more spelling out later,  does she need to tell her servants that there's a new jubilee wing when asking them to call for an emergency ambulance? 
I learn there would have been January sales in 1894. I thought this was a fairly modern occurrence.

Still, a really riveting read as the story is so compelling. Pity then that I learned after I’d read this that it’s a sequel and I missed the first one!