Synopsis
The House of Farrell – home of The Cream, an iconic face product that has seen women flocking to its bijoux flagship store in the Berkeley Arcade since 1953.
At Farrell, you can rely on the personal touch. The legendary Athina Farrell remains the company’s figurehead and in her kingdom at the Berkeley Arcade, Florence Hamilton plies their cosmetics with the utmost discretion. She is sales advisor – and holder of secrets – extraordinaire.
But of course the world of cosmetics is changing and the once glorious House of Farrell is now in decline, its customers tempted away by more fashionable brands.
Enter Bianca Bailey, formidable business woman, mother of three, and someone who always gets her way. Athina and Bianca lock horns over the future of the House of Farrell but it is the past that tells its devastating tale of ambition and ego, passion and wonder.
Here is a tale of survival … and a perfect heritage.
Review
A Perfect Heritage by Penny Vincenzi has been sitting on my shelf for about four years, and is one of the only books by Penny Vincenzi that I haven’t read; the other being her final book A Question of Trust which is also on my shelf waiting to be read. Over Christmas I wanted to read a book I could really get lost in, to indulge in and this was my choice. Set in the run up to the Olympics of 2012 and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the beauty empire of The House of Farrell is in trouble. It’s matriarch, Lady Athina Farrell set up the company with her husband in 1952, the year the Queen came to throne, but it is now in financial difficulties and the only option is to bring in investors. Business troubleshooter Bianca Bailey is brought in, but finds herself a formidable adversary and enemy in Athena. Bianca must try to bring The House of Farrell into the twenty first century whilst keeping the Heritage brand.
Penny Vincenzi is a brilliant storyteller, her characters and plot are always engaging and she has the skill to draw the reader into the book. I love a big book that I can go back to several days in a row, and at over seven hundred and fifty pages this is a big book. Penny Vincenzi fills the pages with wonderful, dynamic and in depth characters and an engaging plot line. The central characters are strong women who are successful in their jobs, and will fight for what they believe in. Lady Athina Farrell believes in company and its products. She is the company founder, and in her eighties is struggling with change, the new technologies and relinquishing any control. Bianca has a brilliant track record in turning troubled companies around but she has never come up against someone who wants her to fail and who is unsupportive like Athina. Their confrontation in the boardroom and the machinations behind closed doors makes for some brilliant and dramatic reading, and if they are honest they both want the same goals, just in different ways.
The main theme of this book is family, not in just the traditional sense, but seeing the company as a family. The House of Farrell is family run with Athena at the helm. The company is like a baby to her and in reality she seems to love the company more than her two children who work for her. She sees the employees as family and most have been there for many years, she knows them by name and takes an interest in their families; the employees jobs are important to her, in some cases more so than profits. Bianca also has troubles at home as well as work. A teenage daughter going through a bad time and her husband takes a new job meaning he will be at home less. Trying to balance work and home becomes difficult as she is pulled in every direction, with the pressure mounting. Both at work and home, Bianca, Athina and the other characters have to fight for what they believe in personally and professionally.
A Perfect Heritage was a fabulous read, and definitely felt like an indulgence over Christmas. I was utterly absorbed by this book, the story and characters were engaging and I honestly couldn’t put the book down (I took it to my dad’s on Christmas Day so I could have a sneaky read). Penny Vincenzi died in 2018 and in my opinion is a great loss and I will definitely miss her books, I have only one left to read. Another fabulous, compelling and captivating read from Penny Vincenzi, I highly recommend this and all her other books.
