And so I bought this book way back then, but planned to stick it on a shelf and try to forget about it until I'd forgotten what I'd learned about the characters in the sequel, and could read this one fresh. I actually read the sequel to The Tea Rose, The Winter Rose, when it first came out, and fell in love with everything about it. There, her indomitable spirit-and the ghosts of her past-propel her rise from a modest west side shopfront to the top of Manhattan's tea trade.Īuthentic and moving, Jennifer Donnelly's The Tea Rose is an unforgettable novel.

Fearing her own death at the dark man's hands, she is forced to flee London for New York. With nothing but their faith in each other to spur them on, Fiona and Joe struggle, save, and sacrifice to achieve their dreams.īut Fiona's dreams are shattered when the actions of a dark and brutal man take from her nearly everything-and everyone-she holds dear. Here, by the whispering waters of the Thames, a bright and defiant young woman dares to dream of a life beyond tumbledown wharves, gaslit alleys, and the grim and crumbling dwellings of the poor.įiona 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. 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. The Tea Rose is a towering old-fashioned story, imbued with a modern sensibility, of a family's destruction, of murder and revenge, of love lost and won again, and of one determined woman's quest to survive and triumph.Įast London, 1888-a city apart.

The tea rose book review