Reading While Black

The Winter Rose is the continued story of the Finnegan family introduced in The Tea Rose. As in the first installment in the series, TWR is a sweeping and climatic romance and character study set against the late Victorian era, this time, focusing on Dr. India Selwyn Jones, an aristocratic lady doctor, and Sid Malone, aka Charlie Finnegan, a king of the London underworld.

Of course their love story is star-crossed, what with India’s ambitious fiancé and rising MP, Freddie Lytton determined to catch Sid Malone to further his political aspirations, and India’s own struggle as a female doctor in the Victorian era. While the characters and plotting doesn’t cover any truly new ground, Donnelly shines when peeling back the layers of late Victorian London’s underworld and describing India’s duties as a doctor. I’m a squeamish sort, who dislikes hospitals, but Donnelly wrote the scenes in the Whitechapel clinic so well, I couldn’t wait for the narrative to return to India’s work. My attention was riveted also by Freddie’s various machinations throughout the book, for it is the schemes cooked up by he that drive the plot and the characters through the perils and pratfalls that throw wrenches into India and Sid’s romance.

Now this was a hefty book, clocking in at over seven hundred pages. For its length and breadth of settings, Donnelly did a pretty good job of keeping the pacing pretty steady. However, in order to sustain the length, there were many shortcuts concerning the characters, and by the last fifth of the book, I could pretty much predict everything that would occur. But the book ended on a pretty nice note, and it was a pleasant way to occupy a few hours.

Grade: B-