THE CHRISTMAS ROSE by DILLY COURT

THE CHRISTMAS ROSE

by

DILLY COURT

THE BLURB:

Standing on London's Royal Dock with the wind biting through her shawl, Rose Munday realises she's been abandoned by her sweetheart...

Rose had risked everything to get to London but, stumbling through the peasoup fog, she has nowhere to go, and no one to turn to.

Scared and alone, Rose steps straight into danger, only to be rescued by two women with even less to their names- a woman of the night and her young sidekick, Sparrow. Left with only a cluster of love letters and all hope of her sweetheart's return fading, Rose finds herself forging a new life with her unlikely companions.

But when a good deed turns sour, a dangerous enemy threatens to ruin them all. Will Rose be able to save her new friends and her future? If she can, a Christmas gift awaits that will change her life forever...

THE REALITY:

I actually started this book just before Christmas, but finished it a couple of months later. Like a soap opera, it was easy to pick up on the thread with only a little backtracking and re-reading after an absence. Rose was a lovely character, but I did find a bit of a cliché going on- it has been mentioned before that too many heroines have red hair and green eyes but, to be fair to the author, it wasn't something that was shoved down your throat.

This was a good study of London life in 1882, but not too detailed, and I think these “feel good” novels are meant to be that way. I did adore some of the characters; such as Rose's boss Eugene, and his sister, Cecilia. I also loved Sparrow, and it was easy to pick up on a lot of her experiences just by the way she came across, and also by the way she spoke and pronounced her words. I do think the bad characters in the book could have been explored in more depth though, and I'm thinking of Gilroy, Piggin and Regan. I'm always interested in what drives such miscreants, and eager to feel the full stench of their characters leap off the page, and it was a wasted opportunity as that didn't happen with this story (again, it's due to the “feel good” nature of the novel, and these reads do tend to skirt over reality a bit too much). It was heartwarming, however, to find that most of the people in this book were inherently good (I'm thinking of Cora, who helps Rose out even though she doesn't know her). Is that a reality? Do people like this really exist en masse in real life? Hmm, I'm not overly sure, but maybe that's just the cynic (or realist!) in me!

The Cairo sections were extreme fun, as was seeing Rose's relationship with Max developing- for the worse. It was easy to see that Rose was going to end up with (spoiler alert!) Eugene, and I can't say that I blame her- physically, his dashing, tall, musketeer looks were more appealing than Max's blondness. I did enjoy these chapters immensely, and found the way Rose seemed stuck between the working and the upper classes very subtly depicted. I also liked that Rose was a pioneer for her time, being a female journalist when women were, generally speaking, banned from having a career. She had to write under a pseudonym; much like Ellis Bell, Currer Bell, Acton Bell and Mary Ann Evans (that's Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Anne Bronte and George Elliot to you!)

As with these novels, there is a huge element of convenience all round, especially with Eugene being rich and in love with Rose from day one. But I cant say that it soured the novel- just made it predictable. A nice read.