The Winter Rose

Prosegue con questo secondo volume la trilogia della Donnelly. I protagonisti del primo libro sono ancora presenti, ma questa volta vengono descritte principalmente le avventure di un'altra coppia composta dal fratello della protagonista del primo volume, boss della malavita dei quartieri poveri di Londra, ma dal cuore naturalmente d'oro, e una giovane dottoressa di famiglia nobile e benestante che per amore del suo lavoro abbandona gli agi della sua posizione sociale per dedicarsi alla cura dei poveracci dei quartieri poveri di Londra. E di chi si innamorerà mai?
Comunque lettura piacevole.

This second book of the Rose trilogy has another dynamic, engaging heroine with another tortured love story. The author's gift for bringing the readers into the world of the past remains strong, but story seems over-plotted as the narrative seems to strain to get as many characters into the same location as possible. This reviewer, a lover of long stories with sprawling plots, frequently wondered out loud, "what the hell else is going to happen here?"
Nevertheless, the book is a rip-roaring, fun read, with the promise of more adventures in the final book.

Like The Tea Rose, The Winter Rose is another enjoyable story by Jennifer Donnelly. Once again, the characters are likable and the plot is compelling. In both The Tea Rose and The Winter Rose, if the reader can over-look the historical incongruities and vagaries of chance the story presents, they will be in for an epic-length treat.

The Winter Rose picks up the story of Joe and Fiona Bristow a couple of years after we last saw them (in The Tea Rose). They are now starting a family while still working at growing both Fiona's Tastea tea empire and Joe's Montague Grocery chain. Additionally, Fiona is obsessed with making contact with her brother Charlie who, as we found in at the end of The Tea Rose, is not dead but who instead has taken on the identity of a local bully, Sid Malone.

In this book we also get a chance to delve more into the story of Sid (Charlie) when he falls in love with a young woman doctor, India Selwyn Jones, and decides to leave the grifting life in order to make a new start with her in America. Sid and India soon find out how hard it can be to try to leave the crime world behind.

Seamus Finnegan is also back in this novel. He quit school in order to join Scott and Shackleton on their Discovery expedition to the South Pole. After that adventure, his romantic attention is captured by a young female mountain climber who he accompanies on a climb of Kilimanjaro.

I particularly enjoyed reading about a whole new set of characters while still getting a chance to check in with the cast of The Tea Rose to see where their lives have taken them since we last met. I also really enjoyed the villain, Freddie Lytton - pure evil with a gentile face. He really kept the story hopping.