***Group Read: The Tea Rose

I have started The Tea Rose. It begins in the late 1800s in London, following an Irish working class family. And there is a killer on the loose. It is off to a pretty good start. I don't know if anyone else is reading this with me or not, but if so, please feel free to comment here.

Also, I know of a group read of The Age of Innocence that is going to take place in the 75 Book Challenge in mid to late October, if you are interested.

I am still in Part One, and it has started to get interesting. I am still trying to figure out how the Jack the Ripper angle fits into things.

I'm going to read The Tea Rose after I finish the book I'm reading.

Yea! I am glad! I just finished Part 1. It is a pretty fast read. Part 1 is the shortest of the three parts, so I am a little less than a third of the way through the book.

I've just finished my RL bookclub read for this month (Lee Child - 'nough said) and will start Tea Rose tonight.

Sorry, I changed my mind! I'm going to read it in October since it features Jack the Ripper...

I am halfway through the book and am enjoying this historical fiction. I am wondering how the parallel stories will come together at the end.

I read The Tea Rose a few years back, and though I won't give any spoilers, the only thing that was kind of too much for me was how they made a main character the inventor of various tea innovations that were obviously invented by others. That only bothered me as a tea history freak - otherwise, it was good enough for me to continue with The Winter Rose afterwards.

Things like that always slip by me. I was kind of wondering the same thing about the character pushing the subway system for NYC.

Well, I finished it - though a few times I thought I would not bother to pick it up again. I found it very predictable and got rather annoyed at be given such an obvious history lesson, with the story overly crafted to include such a range of historical events and situations. Competent writing, though not stunning; reasonable characters, though rather flat. A few American howlers, though not as many as I usually find ("first floor" when she should have used "ground floor", plus some more I forget now). All in all, a good enough instance of the genre, but not enough to make me look for more by this author.

Edited to add 'not' in last sentence.

I finished, too, and I think I liked it more than you did. I did not notice the language issues. I will look out for them in the next book. I did think that there were a few too many poor people who became quite wealthy.