The Winter Rose Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The Winter Rose, a sequel to The Tea Rose, is a simply stunning tale of family drama, politics, and medicine at the turn of the last century. Ms. Donnelly brings back familiar characters such as Fiona and Joe, and adds newer ones that equally enthrall. Long and densely written, this is a book you will not want to put down and one that will stay with you for a very long time.
The scene opens on India Selwyn Jones's graduation from medical school in 1900. Full of idealistic notions, India chooses to forestall marriage to Freddie Lytton while she pursues clinical help in the lower classes of Whitechapel. India isn't marrying Freddie for love, though she is fond of him, but his reasons are much more nefarious. Naive and determined, India is shocked when she has to treat the notorious gangster Sid Malone. As Sid's life hangs in the balance, the two share their stories and eventually become lovers. At the same time as their story is unfolding, Joe Bristow decides it is time for him to go into politics, and his life takes a nasty turn at the hands of Sid. Or was it Sid? The story moves at a fast clip and keeps the characters entangled with lots of coincidences and near-misses. How the path to happiness develops for India, Joe, Fiona, and Sid will keep you turning the pages. The introduction of Seamie, Fiona's younger brother, and his adventurous spirit, help set the stage for a third entry in the series sometime in the future.
This is a fabulous book with larger than life characters. It is satisfying in its ability to bring the reader into the story and it will make you care deeply for every person and situation. It is indeed a tour de force, and one I can wholeheartedly recommend to those who love family sagas, historical fiction, and plain good storytelling. Highly, highly recommended.

Click Here to see more reviews about: The Winter Rose

Get 33% OFF

Click here for more information about The Winter Rose

Read More...

Seven Sorcerers Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The blurb drew me into this book at once, by describing a young girl who woke up one morning only to find that her brother no longer existed. 'Ooh', I thought. 'People being mysteriously erased from existence is always interesting.' And it was! The title of this book is a bit misleading, because the seven sorcerers only really play a side role to the main plot, but I was still happy with the way it turned out.
The story isn't so easy to describe without giving things away. I suppose it's just a classic fantasy adventure of the "child enters magical world" type. Importantly, the characters are all likeable, the villains have proper motives (as opposed to being evil for no reason), and enough intriguing adventures and incidents occur along the way to keep the action flowing quickly. I would have liked to have seen more character development going on, mind you. When the characters are likeable, why not? There was one major character in particular who we never found out much about at all - the focus was entirely on his role as a guide and his escapades in various situations later on. I wanted to know more about his past, who he was, and so on. Even the main character wasn't fleshed out much. We met her mother and brother briefly in the opening chapter, but she seemed to forget about her regular life very quickly after setting out on her quest. This was a shame, because I felt I couldn't really get to know her properly. Ditto for the other characters. There needed to be more depth to them.
The one really major downfall with this book was the ending. I was reading happily along, when the text suddenly... stopped. I turned over the last few pages, thinking that perhaps I'd made a mistake, but no! It was really the end of the book. But I had so many questions that were left unanswered! What happened to the villain?! What about all these weird things that had been going on during the story that hinted of secrets yet to be revealed!? (I'd been looking forward to these revelations for the whole novel, and felt very cheated when they never arrived!) What about the mysterious person they all kept mentioning?! What about wrapping up the adventure?! The characters didn't even have a farewell conversation! I'd been expecting quite a few revelations which never happened! Very disappointing, and there ought to have been at least another two chapters after the place the book stopped. I suppose this means there will probably be a sequel released, because it makes no sense to just end the story like that, otherwise a whole bunch of things that happened would have been rather pointless. But even so, it could have been handled far better.
I'm giving this book a 4/5 (I'd prefer 3.5 if Amazon would let me, though). I liked it a lot, but the ending was terrible! (Well, that's not quite true - it's more like it didn't have an ending at all.)

Click Here to see more reviews about: Seven Sorcerers

Get 33% OFF

Click here for more information about Seven Sorcerers

Read More...