Review: The Winter Rose by Jennifer Donnelly.

Hero: Sid Malone
Heroine: India Selwyn Jones
Grade: 4.75 out of 5

When India Selwyn Jones, a young woman form a noble family, graduates from the London School of Medicine for Women in 1900, her professors advise her to set up her practice in London’s esteemed Harley Street. Driven and idealistic, India chooses to work in the city’s East End instead, serving the desperately poor.

In these grim streets, India meets -and saves the life of- London’s most notorious gangster, Sid Malone. A hard, wounded man, Malone is the opposite of India’s aristocratic fiance, Freddie Lytton, a rising star in the House of Commons. Though malone represents all she despises, India finds herself unwillingly drawn ever closer to him, intrigued by his hidden, mysterious past.

And before long, even as they fight hard against their feelings, India and Sid fall in love. Theirs is an unpredictable, passionate, and bittersweet affair, and it causes destruction they could never have imagined.

Oh man, last year Ames read and reviewed this book and loved it. It made me curious about the book and when we got another review copy of the book, I took this book on. I say that I took this book on because this sucker is over 700 pages. It’s filled with an exciting story with just a little bit of everything to make a story pop. The heroine, India Sellwyn Jones just graduates from college with her medical degree. So she’s a doctor in a time when it wasn’t yet common for women to become doctors. Women were fighting for their rights to vote and all of that. For India to graduate and become a doctor was quite the achievement for her, which came with a price. The price being that her parents disowned her.

Instead of going to work in a well known hospital or anything like that, Indie opts to go and work in Whitechapel and get her causes underway with the help of her fiance’ Freddie Lytton. She detests Sid Malone and what he stands for but when duties calls for her to heal him, she does and they talk and before she knows it, she’s fallen in love with him and that love sets off a chain of events that totally takes off.

This whole book was one adventure after the other. There’s so many characters that are rich in everything that it makes reading this 700 page book zip right through. It still took me a little bit to read but I hecka enjoyed myself while I was reading this. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to lose themselves in an epic love story that will pull every heart string you have inside your body. You will fall in love with the characters, you will want to murder the murderers in this story and all of those scheming politicians will make your blood boil, especially that Freddie Lytton. This book takes you all over the world and it makes you feel as if you’re apart of the story. It’s just a really good book to fall into. I dove right into this book and didn’t want to come up for air. This book rocked my socks and I totally think you should let it rock yours.

Jennifer Donnelly wove an intricate story that will leave you wanting more. This is the follow up book to The Tea Rose and though I haven’t read that book, I want to. This book was great and I hear that the first book was just as great, if not better. It’s made me totally anxious to read more by Jennifer Donnelly and I’m so glad that I took the time to tackle this big book. It was that good. You guys should definitely read it and meet India and Sid for yourselves, you’ll love them, I promise!

This book is available from Hyperion. You can buy it here.

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