Poor Harriet Laws. She’s an orphan raised by her grandmother, Molly. The two live frugally with their combined incomes and have an extremely close relationship. But Harriet’s world shatters when Molly unexpectedly collapses and dies, just as she’s about to reveal something about the father Harriet never knew. If that weren’t enough, Harriet’s evil boss sacks her for daring to take off work for Molly’s funeral.

Distraught, Harriet considers doing the unthinkable, but fate intervenes in the person of Tom Fletcher. With a renewed outlook on life, Harriet begins to find herself. She lands first one job then a second and never seems to miss an opportunity to make a friend or help someone in need.

Tom is a baker with a promising future and remains firmly in the picture. He and Harriet continue to see each other often. Their friendship remains platonic, but both secretly hope it develops into something more. That is, until the smarmy toff CJ Rutherford appears and manoeuvres Tom aside to claim Harriett as his own. Marriage to CJ is inevitable but promises to be a disaster. Which it turns out to be.

Secrets, Shame, and a Shoebox kept me turning pages from start to finish. I enjoyed reading it tremendously. Harriet and Tom are engaging characters and it was easy to care about them and their lives.

The plot of the story is somewhat predictable, although not completely so, and the ending has just a touch of too-good-to-be-true to it. I was also ever-so-slightly frustrated that no big secrets were revealed despite a few hints that the secrets were there. Yet at the end of the day, none of these flaws detracted seriously from my ability to enjoy the book.