Fallen Grace
Author: Mary Hooper
Series: ---
Publisher: Bloomsbury
How Received: publisher ARC
Grace Parkes has just had to do a terrible thing. Having given birth to an illegitimate child, she has travelled to the famed Brookwood Cemetery to place her small infant's body in a rich lady's coffin. Following the advice of a kindly midwife, this is the only way that Grace can think of to give something at least to the little baby who died at birth, and to avoid the ignominy of a pauper's grave. Distraught and weeping, Grace meets two people at the cemetery: Mrs Emmeline Unwin and Mr James Solent. These two characters will have a profound affect upon Grace's life. But Grace doesn't know that yet. For now, she has to suppress her grief and get on with the business of living: scraping together enough pennies selling watercress for rent and food; looking after her older sister, who is incapable of caring for herself; thwarting the manipulative and conscience-free Unwin family, who are as capable of running a lucrative funeral business as they are of defrauding a young woman of her fortune. A stunning evocation of life in Victorian London, with vivid and accurate depictions, ranging from the deprivation that the truly poor suffered to the unthinking luxuries enjoyed by the rich: all bound up with a pacy and thrilling plot, as Grace races to unravel the fraud about to be perpetrated against her and her sister.
Buy | Borrow OR Brush Off
Fallen Grace managed to intrigue me and make me want to throw it across the room all at the same time.
The plot is fantastic; the main reason I kept reading was because I wanted to know how all the parts came together, even though they were each individual part was fairly easy to figure out. It was like having sections of the puzzle finished and not having the pieces that connect them.
I like Grace well enough; she's nice, but a bit air headed. Her relationship with Lily was wonderful - I felt like it captured the emotions that come with being a sister, especially to somebody like Lily, wonderfully.
The villains in this book were truly villainous. Normally I prefer my evil characters to have a history, or be fleshed out a bit more than these were, but I think I actually like the book better with the I-hate-them-because-they're-horrible principal.
I didn't understand her relationship with James Solent. It worked wonderfully for the book - without it, things wouldn't have tied together nearly as nicely - but I felt like it was based off of something imaginary. I would have liked to see it develop a bit more.
All in all, Fallen Grace wasn't a bad book. It doesn't stand out very much among the historical fiction currently on the shelves, and it's not perfect. It is, however, very beautifully written with some fantastic characters.
Overall Rating & Final Comments: 6/10. Nothing spectacular, but beautiful writing.
Challenges Used In: Young Adult Historical Fiction Challenge