Received this from Net Gallery and thank you so very much for letting me read about a girl who was just a young woman who wanted to change politics in Great Britain in the 1920's-1930's and the many other people she met and had a hand in changing politics in England. Jennie takes you on her adventures on who,what,where and why she did what she did for her club and in her personal life. This is truly a very great read if you are interested in how this country was run political and the different parties in England,and what changes occurred with Jennie Lee's present and influence to make it better for her people! The only thing I had a problem with is I know nothing of how England's political workings worked before I started reading,and if I missed it,so sorry,but it just got me lost as I knew nothing before I started reading.

The curious part of this novel is that the characters are real people, who were actually involved in politics in the UK in the 1920s and 30s, and their true lives are somewhat mixed with a wild imagining of the author to make a political and historical thriller that is fascinating and moreish without question. Indeed, it was somewhat disappointing to see how much of the piece was imagined and how much was reality, as the novel reads so realistically.

In this story it starts with how Jennie Lee is conceived, which is in a manner fitting to a Scottish couple who believed in eugenics and brought up to be forthright and opinionated from a very early age, encouraged by parents who were enlightened and eager for her to make a mark on the world. Jennie was elected to the British parliament at the age of almost 25, making her five years too young to actually have voted for herself, the voting age for women being 30 years of age at the time (oh my!) She was a firebrand and held high ideals that often led to disruption within her own political party. And she was a woman of the world, living a life unfettered by social rules and expectations for her sex. Involved with both married men and others as the won't take her fancy, liberated and viewing herself as equal to men in every way, refusing to be pigeonholed. Through her personal relationships with royalty and political dealings, Jennie finds herself caught in the middle of a dangerous game of political intrigue and has the savvy to alter the course of the world through her socialist leanings and ability to see situations clearly and take courses of action that might have been missed by other people.
It's not often that the past is so convincingly wrapped up in a story that would hold the attention of many a modern person who reports to hating history, but this book is one that does the job admirably. With the likes of British bulldog in the making Winston Churchill, American turned first sitting female politician Lady Astor, first Labour Prime Minister Ramsay McDonald, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons, the future Queen Mother, the womanizing fascist Oswald Mosley; the Great War prime minister Lloyd-George; and the radical Labour MP Aneurin Bevan all featuring in the story, it is a case of having your computer next to you to see how much is real and how much is fictional as you read this page-turner.

It is enthralling, lively and has the potential to have elements of reality scattered throughout the story, making it both a thriller of a story and a thriller in reading the lives of the very real people written about. Clever, exciting and powerful, this is a book not to be missed.

I really had to slog through this. The author presupposed his reader knew the inner workings of the British Parliament in the 1920s and 30s. This reader did not.