Title: The Tea Rose Series: The Tea Rose #1
Author: Jennifer Donnelly
Published: December 10, 2007
Genre(s): Historical Fiction
Page Count: 557
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads: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.
Imagine Gone with the Wind. Imagine Scarlett O’Hara, a self-made woman, who pulls herself up out of poverty to become impossibly successful. Now imagine Scarlett, at the very end of the story, ending up with Ashley Wilkes, the great milksop, and finding out that her parents are alive, and learning that the entire Civil War was only a dream—she’s back at home at Tara and everything is right with the world. Imagine that.
Yeah…that’s basically The Tea Rose in a nutshell.
This book is entertaining. I’m not saying it’s not. But it’s ridiculous. Jennifer Donnelly can write, but why oh why did she have to write this particular story? It’s complete rubbish. Historically inaccurate fluff with a horrifyingly perfect ending and a terrible love interest and just fairytale-like qualities throughout. The Tea Rose is not a good book. It’s an entertaining one; it’s a well-written one. But the story itself is just embarrassing. It’s like a really bad historical romance decided to get pretentious.
At its core, The Tea Rose is about the American Dream. Irish factory worker Fiona “immigrates” to New York and pulls herself up by her bootstraps to become a self-made millionaire and a Viscountess, and manages to avenge her father’s murder and wind up with her childhood sweetheart. It’s a sickeningly feel-good tale. Because of that, it lacks authenticity. Donnelly’s story is too good to be true. It reads like wish-fulfillment, like fantasy. That’s not what I like in my historical fiction.
Another thing I value in historical fiction is accuracy. And that is something I did not find very much of here.
I am not impressed with this book. Not at all. It’s silly. It’s fluffy. It’s completely unreal. I don’t deny that The Tea Rose was compulsively readable, but that’s probably it’s only quality. Overall, I was aggravated and fed up with this book. It’s not worthwhile historical fiction; it’s not worthwhile historical romance. It’s not really worthwhile at all, as anything.
