Yesterday was all popovers, compulsive reading of The Winter Rose, and going to work.  I still can’t figure out why I was so addicted to that book.  The popovers, that makes sense.  Warm, puffy, eggy beauties slathered in butter and honey or strawberry jam – what’s not to love?  But a book that I kept inwardly criticizing but could NOT step away from?  Here’s my review from Goodreads:

Cliche-ridden? Yes. Improbable coincidences? Yes. Over-the-top drama? Murder, sex, politics, poverty, money, medicine, women’s rights, workers’ rights, colonialism, revenge, mountain-climbing, Antarctica, Africa, faked deaths (yes, plural), amputations, paraplegics, death by wild animal attack, and doomed lovers reunited? Yes, yes, yes. Was I able to put it down? No. Despite all its faults, I couldn’t put the silly thing down. Saga-riffic. This feels like a horribly slippery slope, and before you know it I’ll have given up on Good Books and I’ll just be reading page-turners and eating bonbons.

This is the sequel to The Tea Rose, and there’s a horribly dull page or two spent recapping the first book’s equally improbable plot points, but this one could be read independently. You just wouldn’t have the emotional background on a few of the characters. Also, I’m betting that Donnelly’s planning a third book, because she left Seamie and Willa’s story hanging, emotionally, just like she left Charlie’s story hanging in The Tea Rose. And, God help me, I’ll read it.