Sunday, July 31, 2011

The Tea Rose - Jennifer Donnelly

Title: The Tea Rose (The Tea Rose #1)
Author: Jennifer Donnelly
Published: 2007 (first published 2002)
Pages: 544
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: 4/5

East London, 1888 - a city apart. A place of shadow and light where thieves, whores, and dreamers mingle, where children play in the cobbled streets by day and a killer stalks at night, where bright hopes meet the darkest truths. Here, by the whispering waters of the Thames, Fiona Finnegan, a worker in a tea factory, hopes to own a shop one day, together with her lifelong love, Joe Bristow, a costermonger's son. With nothing but their faith in each other to spur them on, Fiona and Joe struggle, save, and sacrifice to achieve their dreams.

But Fiona's life is shattered when the actions of a dark and brutal man take from her nearly everything-and everyone-she holds dear. Fearing her own death, she is forced to flee London for New York. There, her indomitable spirit propels her rise from a modest West Side shop-front to the top of Manhattan's tea trade. But Fiona's old ghosts do not rest quietly, and to silence them, she must venture back to the London of her childhood, where a deadly confrontation with her past becomes the key to her future. (via Goodreads)



Why I read this book: I read this book because I had read another book of her's a few months earlier and was intrigued.


Thoughts:  I really liked this book and was the best book that I have so far read this year.  There was something special about this book that made me not want to put down the book for a number of hours a few weeks ago and incur the amount of fines that I did so that I could finish the book before I went away for a couple of weeks.  The only problem I really had with the book was that the ending seemed to be a bit rushed.



8754 / 15000 pages. 58% done!

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