historical fiction, women's fiction, romance
Fiona is a hard-working teenager in east London in 1888. She
gives most of the money she makes packaging tea tins to her family but has been
stocking away her meager savings in hopes of opening her own tea shop some day with
her boyfriend, Joe. Joe has also been working hard and saving money. He gets a
better-paying job and moves across the city. Then, due to (mostly) external
forces, their lives and their plans change forever.
Overall, The Tea Rose was a fun read. I have no idea how it appeared
on my To Read list. I adored the characters so much. They were all well-drawn
and faced authentic difficulties. Fiona’s heartbreaks were very distressing and
made her victories that much sweeter. Granted, Fiona had a lot of good luck
contributing to her successes. But that success was so well-deserved after all
the hard work and tragedy she endured previously that I didn’t let that bother
me overmuch. There was a lot of drama—many ups and many downs. The drama was definitely
drawn out too much at times. But I was swept up in the story.
The novel was long but I enjoyed the time spent with these
characters and couldn’t wait to find out what would happen next. A few sections
seemed thrown in as background noise at the beginning of Part 3, but otherwise,
the story moved well. The historical settings were also clearly presented
within the context of the story and I appreciated the fears of those living
through the time and place of Jack the Ripper, the differences between the
classes in both England and the United States, and, of course, a story about a
strong and brave young woman with goals.
It was interesting that Jennifer Donnelly re-used names for some
characters. There was more than one Lucy and more than one Eddie, for example.
I don’t recall reading any books where the author did that before. Obviously, it normally avoids confusion to
give each character a unique name. These were not significant characters in the
novel but it was noted as something unusual.
However, I have to say that about ¾ of the way through the
novel, it started to grow tedious with the evil forces and assumptions always
getting in the way of the payoff. There
is a line. Some otherwise great books have crossed it and left a bad taste in
my mouth. It’s entertainment until the
teasing just becomes cruelty. There was
no doubt this novel would have a happy ending and by this point in the book, so I
just started feeling manipulated. I love a nice, long novel if there is forward
momentum. This one stalled out because
it was obvious that Donnelly was going to add at least another 100 pages to
draw out this drama unnecessarily. Alas, if it had not been so drawn out it
would have gotten a higher rating from me.
The narrator, Jill Tanner, was a great voice actor with good
accents and she had a naturally low voice so was able to pull off male voices
really well. However, the main character was a young woman and, while Tanner
did voice her correctly sometimes, she was inconsistent at keeping that tone
while voicing Fiona. Fiona did not always sound like Fiona. Instead, Tanner would lapse into her natural
low voice and then it was hard to distinguish characters having a
dialogue. The lapse for the main
character was my only complaint but it was an unforgivable offense. I’ll give
her an A-.
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