The Tea Rose

I never skip ahead when I read. This is my cardinal rule of reading, which I have embraced from my earliest days as a reader. And yet, I could not help myself. I had to know, absolutely had to know, what became of Fiona and, by extension all of the characters in The Tea Rose.

The Tea Rose, set in Jack Ripper's East End, is nothing if not gripping. From the opening pages, which depict the murder of a Whitechapel prostitute by none other than Jack himself, to Fiona's final fight for her life, Jennifer Donnelly has packed her pages with action, suspense, and not a little violence.

Fiona Finnegan dreams of life away from this place, a life where she will be the proprietor of her own tea shop and the wife of her childhood sweetheart, Joe Bristow. To achieve this dream, they both will have to overcome the violence of the docks, especially when talk turns to unions, and of the streets themselves.

Donnelly's writing is a reminder of the hard scrabble life of Victorian England, and the grit and character necessary to rise above it. I loved Fiona - and Joe - as soon as I began reading. It did seem to me that Donnelly heaped hardship upon hardship on them, especially Fiona. At times, The Tea Rose teetered on the brink from implausible to impossible, and I wished Donnelly had settled for slightly more realistic plot twists.

All the same, I sped through this book, more than once flipping ahead to see how it all turned out. The first in a trilogy, I am looking forward to reading books two and three this summer.