Shake!

January 1967, Lily Tempest, 17, longs to break free. She dreams of university, joining the middle classes, looking like Jane Asher, shedding her past to acquire a future.

She and her three sisters, Rose, Iris and Daisy, have drifted into a seaside town, along with their parents, Melody and Doug. Melody’s ambitions for her daughters are summed up in one word. Marriage. Lily would rather die first. Instead, she goads her sisters into reaching for far more than they want for themselves – with comic but also dark and dangerous results.

As winter slides towards the summer of love Lily becomes increasingly aware that to leave will mean permanent exile and in a time of huge social questioning she begins to realise that within her own family honesty and duty, love and sex, fidelity and loyalty are not what they seem.

Set firmly in the Sixties but timeless in its appeal, heartbreaking and funny, Yvonne Roberts’ novel is an exhilarating portrait of small town life that is as big as the world.