Mum's Monday: The Pearly Queen by Mary Jane Staples

This book starts off in chapter one, where you could say it is almost a list of what is happening or has happened to the family, including the extended relation of Aunt Edie. It is heart-warming that after her tragic loss, Jack Andrews looked after her and got her through a very hard time.

The fact that Maud Andrews has found religion is very apparent the story line lays it on thick, this is a strong solid set up to what is to come. Sadly, marriages don’t fail for anything less than serious, most of the time, so the story can introduce Aunt Edie, the Pearly Queen, after which the book title is named after.

Chapter three isn’t very nice to read, Maud has had a few home truths told to her and she hasn’t listened and has still gone off, upsetting some of her family a lot. It is heart-warming for Aunt Edie to step in. there is a bit of intrigue, it seems Aunt Edie may have an agenda.

The old fashioned language in this book is sometimes not so easy to read but it does add depth to the story that is set just after the first world war and before the second world war. This book is not an easy book to read, I have read easier flowing books, but with this book you have to concentrate more whilst reading it.

In the situation the family find themselves it, it is good to see mentioned a bit of balance, in that although the girls need a mum, Aunt Edie is not actually replacing the mother just the motherly role in what seems like a light-hearted way, firm but fair, from what I can make out from what is written in this story, or just being what the girls need as well as the whole family at a difficult time in their lives.

Whilst reading chapter five it makes me sad and angry. The reason I think this type of religious group can be written about because it isn’t linked with any actual proper religion, that I know of. It also makes me wonder ‘How far it will be pushed’ especially at the end of this chapter where forgery is mentioned.

It is lovely to read that the Andrew’s family are having some fun. Sadly, it is in the absence of the mother.

It is a bit of a cheek that mother said that the children’s Dad wasn’t there when he was needed, seeing as she herself walked out on them all and has her priorities all wrong. I am also glad the food from the cupboard was restored and not taken to be given to the poor. This book is well written it really pushes home the point that the mother and the ‘Repenters’ she has joined can be seen as very much misguided.

A part that made me laugh out loud at the beginning of chapter twelve, was the fact of the way Jack Andrew’s has improved and the benefits of that when he is eating his dinner, as pointed out by Jimmy.

This book is becoming a fun book to read, especially reading about all the antics the Andrew family with Aunt Edie getup to, coupled with Sophy and Jimmy’s misadventures whilst Jimmy is working, it all makes for now a light-hearted read.

In chapter fourteen mother Mary has really gone too far, way too far, when visiting back at the family home, what she takes is extremely unorthodox, misguided and it came as a shock to me and now what on earth is going to happen next? Get the things back, I should’ve seen that coming of course, and this part was well written.

I do hope it works out for Jack and Jimmy but at the point of where I am reading, just after chapter seventeen, I don’t know as yet in which direction both their lives will go in, romantically, whatever/despite the neighbours may or may not think/say.

In chapter twenty it is a shock to read of what happened to mother, no one deserves that. It is good to read of the women getting away from the ‘League of Repenters’. Sadly, some people do get away with not being a good person and of committing a possible crime. It is good to show; you could say ‘Cults’ are not always a place as they seem.

I am glad it all worked out for Celia, Jack and Jimmy and I can’t think of a more appropriate ending to this book.