These Shallow Graves

These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly (2015)

Jo Montfort is the daughter of a wealthy family in late 19th-century New York and her life is totally planned out. When she graduates from finishing school she'll marry Bram Aldrich, a plan that's been in place since they were children. But when Jo's father is killed, allegedly while cleaning his revolver, she suspects there is more to the story. So she starts digging, enlisting the help of reporter Eddie Gallagher, medical student and morgue employee Oscar Rubin, and a pickpocket called Fairy Fay. Following the long and winding trail of clues, Jo learns that there are more secrets in her family's business than she could ever have imagined and people who will go to any lengths to keep that information hidden.

As is the case with most heroines in novels, Jo is different from many other girls of her age and class. She wants to be a reporter like Nellie Bly, but her future has no room to pursue her own interests. The idea of marrying Bram isn't awful - they've been friends their whole lives and he's a genuinely good guy - but it doesn't excite her. Now, Eddie Gallagher excites her. She knows they can't have a future together unless she is willing to dash the hopes and dreams of both her family and Bram's, who have been long looking forward to uniting. She is trapped between what she wants and what is planned for her future, but right now she can't think about anything else except uncovering the web of lies and murder she has discovered. No matter how many warnings she gets from her uncle Phillip or from Eddie, she is compelled to keep looking.

Along the way she meets a young ruffian named Tumbler and a picketpocket her own age named Fay, both of whom Eddie knew growing up, and who work for a guy named The Tailor who provides them with food and shelter as long as they steal for him. He's compared to Fagan in Oliver Twist, but it hardly needs to be pointed out, the similarities are so glaring. There's even a scene in which Fay gives Jo a lesson in picking pockets that is almost straight out of the Dickens novel. I can't decide if it's a charming homage or a rip-off.

This isn't the only unoriginal part of this story, and I found some aspects of it completely predictable. For the intended audience of teenagers, though, I don't know if it would be. Presumably they haven't read lots of other stories yet that follow some of the paths this one does. Still, it was enjoyable and fun. I loved how Jo and Fay's friendship developed, and especially the conversation they had one night about their lives and freedom while walking over the Brooklyn Bridge and smoking. Their lives were so different it was difficult to understand each other in some ways, yet they both yearned for the same things and were both trapped in different ways. I liked Jo's ambitions to be a reporter, and how her knowledge of Nellie Bly helped her later in the book, and the way she struggled with the idea of marrying Bram, which wouldn't be terrible, but still not what she wanted. How hard was she willing to fight against a fate that was not bad, but only ok? This was a much better story than those in which young women are set to marry mean men they hate. Jo's life with Bram would be a comfortable one, and possibly even happy.

I've read a number of books by Jennifer Donnelly including the Tea Rose series and, most recently, Stepsister. While this book was maybe not as good as the others, I am happy to read anything she writes. She brings her historical settings alive, creates compelling characters, and always keeps me immersed in her stories.

Stepsister

Stepsister by Jennifer Donnelly (2019)

I heard of this book quite recently, just before publication, and immediately requested it through my library system. I don't read many fairy tale retellings but I'm very intrigued by them and Jennifer Donnelly is a fantastic author. She wrote The Tea Rose, The Winter Rose, and The Wild Rose, and the teen novel A Northern Light, which I loved before I had this blog or Goodreads. So when I heard she was releasing a book about one of Cinderella's ugly stepsisters, WELL.

So, Isabelle cut off her toes so her foot would fit in the glass slipper, and she almost got away with it. But it's just as well that she didn't because she's not interested in the prince. She's interested in things like sword-fighting and a boy named Felix who she lost long ago. She has disappointed her mother because she's not pretty enough or feminine enough or demure enough. Now her stepsister Ella has left to marry the prince, and Isabelle and her sister Octavia are left at home with their mother.

The whole town has turned against them now that they know how the family treated Ella. Both stepsisters and their mother are harassed and ostracized, and ultimately they lose their house and must depend on a stranger who is pressured into taking them in. The conditions are inhumane, but the girls do their best to take care of themselves and their mother, whose health is failing. This all could have made them more bitter, but they recognize that they brought a lot of this on themselves with their unfair treatment of Ella.

Isabelle feels like things would go much better for her if she were pretty. Pretty girls are always given the benefit of the doubt, seen as having more value than girls who aren't pretty, and liked by everyone. One day Isabelle encounters a fairy queen who promises to grant her wish to be pretty, but Isabelle has to first find the missing pieces of her heart. Meanwhile, there are others who are trying to control her path. Fate has drawn a map of her life, which will soon end in bloodshed. Chance has stolen the map and is trying to alter the path. Both Fate and Chance have now come to the village of St. Michel to try and alter her life, but perhaps Isabelle will wrest control and determine her own destiny.

I loved this take on what happened after the events of Cinderella, and the new dimensions of Ella's stepsisters. There was adventure, magic, and love. Isabella and Octavia dealt with their former mistreatment of Ella and I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that the three girls came together for a reckoning. Isabelle grew so much as a human being during the course of this story, which was incredibly empowering. I loved her trajectory! Even Octavia, who wasn't the focus of the story, came through as a real person here, one who is completely uninterested in romance (with the prince or anyone else) but is devoted to math and science. Neither of these girls fit in with what was expected of young ladies, nor were they taken seriously by anyone around them, but ultimately they grew into confident young women, sure of themselves and demanding to be respected. It was incredibly satisfying!

The Wild Rose

The Wild Rose by Jennifer Donnelly (2011)

The third and final book of the Tea Rose trilogy follows Seamus Finnegan, brother of the two subjects of the previous books, and Willa Alden, the daring adventurer and love of his life. Previously, they had been hiking Kilimanjaro together when Willa became badly injured. Seamus managed to get her to safety, but her leg could not be saved. Though Willa begged Seamus to let her die, he insisted the doctor operate, and Willa was so upset she didn't want to see him again. Except that she's just as madly in love with him as he is with her, so in this book they continue to come together and separate, come together and separate, like some sort of tidal movement.

The Great War is upon us now, which gives this book a slightly different tenor from the others. A large part of the novel is also set in Arabia, where Willa is traveling with her friend Tom Lawrence, a.k.a. Lawrence of Arabia. There is a great deal of drama, anguish, and near death for both Seamus and Willa, as well as those around them. Things keep happening that seem like they will be kept apart forever, but based on the first two books I knew that was not a real possibility. The fun, though, is figuring out how they'll get around the seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Oh, and there's a whole subplot involving spies blackmailing others into helping them out.

The characters we got to know in the last two books are here again, too. Fiona and Joe have a whole batch of kids now, and India and Sid travel from California to London and are around for much of the story too. The family runs a hospital in England for soldiers returning to the war. Fiona and Joe's oldest daughter, Katie, has begun a political newspaper and hopes to follow in her father's footsteps by running for office. Oddly, a woman could run for office before she being old enough to vote during this time.

There's over 600 pages just packed with all these people (and more!) and their lives over the course of several years, but I read it in just 6 days. It's not only an immersive reading experience, but one that's very easy to jump right into every time I sat down with it. Sometimes it takes me a while to get into a book when I sit down with it, but every time I picked this up the very first words would draw me right in.

One of the things I like the most about this series is that it doesn't matter how long it's been since reading the last one. Each one is about different characters, and though characters from previous books are present and their stories still relevant, Donnelly gently reminds us of those stories without huge info dumps.

Through much of the book, I felt that it was probably my least favorite of the series because of the wartime setting. But there's a spy story here which, even though I'm not into spy stories, got really really good and by the end, I liked this one every bit as much as the others.

I can't believe these books haven't not yet been adapted for the screen. They'd make an excellent series, with each book providing enough story for a whole season. There's so much fodder here, what with all the relationship drama, secrets, war, travel, adventure, and dangerous villains. I really loved this series from beginning to end.

This is the third book I've finished for my 2017 Personal Reading Challenge, which normally would make me feel like I'm ahead of the game. However, since I added more to my reading challenge this year I'm only feeling like I'm not quite behind. The part of the challenge that involves specific titles is going fine, but the categories all feel very uncertain so I may need to buckle down soon and make some decisions about what books I want to read for each.

The Winter Rose

The Winter Rose by Jennifer Donnelly (2008)

Although The Winter Rose is a sequel to The Tea Rose, I was glad to find that it can stand alone because it's been a few years since I read the first book and I don't remember the details. The main characters, Fiona and Joe, are back again and joined by a new and interesting cast including a lady doctor, India Selwyn Jones. After graduating from medical school she begins work at another doctor's practice until she can afford to pursue her dream of opening a clinic for women and children in London's impoverished East End. But her boss is not sympathetic to the plight of women and India becomes even more impatient to set out on her own. Meanwhile, she's engaged to politician Freddie Lytton, a total asshat who wants India for her huge dowry and plans to make her quit her job because it is so unbecoming for a lady to be a doctor. But when India meets - and falls for - local crime boss Sid Malone, everybody's plans become derailed.

This is a 700-page book just packed with drama, adventure, and romance. My description is just a small bit of the story, which sucked me in from the very beginning. What I remember most about The Tea Rose was just being so immersed in it, and so incredibly invested in the people I got to know over the course of many years (and pages!) It was as though I went through all these harrowing experiences with them. I'm happy to say that the experience was the same with this book. There were times that I was positively stressed out at what was happening, even though I knew that most of it would work out in the end.

It was nice to see Fiona and Joe again, and although they definitely still had a good story, it was India who I was most interested in. Graduating from medical school in 1900 was a big deal for a woman and many people had strong opinions about this. I love a story about a woman ahead of her time, and India's story was very satisfying. She was smart, ambitious, and had a passion for helping the poor. Most of all, she was practical and I just love a protagonist who is that realistic and sensible about things like getting birth control to those who need it. The doctor she worked for, on the other hand, I wanted to smack. For instance, when preparing for a visit with a woman in labor, India asked him for chloroform and he refused. This was his explanation: "Labor pain is Eve's legacy, and to ameliorate it would be against God's will. Birth pains are good for women. They build character and inhibit indecent feeling." And he wasn't even the real villain of the book.

The Victorian era is my favorite historical time period and Donnelly does a great job bringing her many characters to life in this long and complicated story. It was incredibly satisfying! I don't know when I'll finally get around to reading the third and final book in the series, but I am very much looking forward to the experience.

The Tea Rose

The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly (2002)

In 1888 in Whitechapel lives a young woman named Fiona Finnegan. Her family doesn't have much, but they're happy. Fiona is looking forward to marrying her childhood sweetheart Joe Bristow, who lives just down the road. But trouble is brewing in London. The unions are stirring up unrest in underpaid workers like Fiona and her family, and a man known only as Jack the Ripper is murdering prostitutes. Just when she's on the verge adulthood and marriage, events converge to rip from Fiona everything she found worth living for. Soon she finds herself on a ship to New York where she plans to start a new life, but she won't forget the past and everything she has lost.

There are so many good things in this novel that I hardly know where to begin. Let's start with the setting: Victorian London. That's all I really need to make me happy, but Donnelly writes about it in such lucid detail I felt completely transported. I was reminded of Sarah Waters' Tipping the Velvet, that's how good it was. Fiona worked in a tea factory, her beau in a vegetable market, and the details of their work and home lives were described enough to give you a real sense of what it was like - the sights, smells, and tastes - without bogging you down too much. Plus, Jack the Ripper!

Fiona is now one of my favorite characters. I always like a headstrong, independent woman ahead of her time and she is definitely that. Amazingly strong and resourceful, Fiona endured a great deal of tragedy and rose above it, using her grief and anger to fuel her drive to success. Watching her turn around her uncle's business in New York before opening up her own was incredibly satisfying. Another favorite character was Nicholas Soames, who Fiona befriends on the ship from London. I don't know how realistic it is that she is so accepting of a gay man in that time period, but I enjoyed their close friendship a great deal. Without spoiling anything, I'll just say that it became very touching and, dare I say it, poignant.

There is just so much more here, in terms of plot and characters, but I don't want to reveal too much because it's just so wonderful to experience it all unfolding. It's amazing that it all takes place in a ten-year period. Fiona must be exhausted. It's a long book too - my copy is around 550 pages. But unlike some long books I've read, I really savored every bit of it and even feel happy that there are two sequels. I probably won't get to them right away, but I will at some point. I picked this for the Staff Picks Book Group at my library and can't wait to hear what everyone else thinks of it.