The Buttonmaker’s Daughter by Merryn Allingham was just published last month and the sequel is due out in July. I heard about this one from Margaret @BooksPlease and you can read her thoughts on the book here.

I went from not being quite sure about this book to really feeling sorry that I had come to the end of it, then happy when I realised that there was a sequel coming out soon.

The setting is rural Sussex 1914, in the run up to the beginning of World War I. Summerhayes is an estate belonging to Joshua Summer who had made his wealth in the button making trade. His daughter Elizabeth is now nineteen and her parents are keen to marry her off, but during her summer London season when she was presented at court she turned down two good offers of marriage. She’s an artist and has hopes of making a living through her art.

Relations between the Summer family and the owners of the next-door estate are fraught, it was Elizabeth’s mother’s family home, now owned by her brother who is jealous of the wealth that she has married into, but despises them for being in trade.

This book deals with lots of topics in a time of change. Women’s suffrage, arranged marriages, religious bigotry, class distinctions, romance, same sex relationships and Irish politics – it’s all going on.

This is the first book I’ve read by Merryn Allingham and I’ll definitely be reading more. She also writes under the name Isobel Goddard.

I’m swithering between giving it a four or five on Goodreads.