The Midnight Rose by Lucinda Riley
A lifelong
passion. An endless search.
Spanning
four generations, The Midnight Rose by Lucinda Riley sweeps from the glittering
palaces of the great maharajas of India to the majestic stately homes of
England, following the extraordinary life of a girl, Anahita Chavan, from 1911
to the present day . . .
In the heyday
of the British Raj, eleven-year-old Anahita, from a noble but impoverished
family, forms a lifelong friendship with the headstrong Princess Indira, the
privileged daughter of rich Indian royalty. Becoming the princess's official
companion, Anahita accompanies her friend to England just before the outbreak
of the Great War. There, she meets the young Donald Astbury - reluctant heir to
the magnificent, remote Astbury Estate - and his scheming mother.
Eighty
years later, Rebecca Bradley, a young American film star, has the world at her
feet. But when her turbulent relationship with her equally famous boyfriend
takes an unexpected turn, she's relieved that her latest role, playing a 1920s
debutante, will take her away from the glare of publicity to the wilds of
Dartmoor in England. Shortly after filming begins at the now-crumbling Astbury
Hall, Ari Malik, Anahita's great-grandson, arrives unexpectedly, on a quest for
his family's past. What he and Rebecca discover begins to unravel the dark
secrets that haunt the Astbury dynasty . . .
On the cover of the paperback of this book is a
comparison that pushes all the right buttons: A sure bet for fans of Lauren
Willig Kate Morton, or Maeve Binchy.” Since Kate Morton is one of my favorite
authors, I had to read this novel for myself. It had all the right elements:
dual narratives of past and present, a mystery, and a passionate and forbidden
love affair.
Anahita’s story, told through a 300-page letter to
her son is what captivated me, particularly the parts set in India. As a young child, Anahita befriends the
mercurial daughter of the maharaja and thus changes her life forever, leading
her far from home to England. Many years later, she dies soon after her
hundredth birthday, convinced with her last breath that her first born son did
not die but was taken from her. She extracts a promise from her great-grandson
to find out what really happened and so after some soul-searching, he flies to
Astbury Hall, the great English manor at the heart of Anahita’s great tragedy.
There he finds a movie being made starring Rebecca
Bradley, an American movie star, as well as the current owner of the hall,
Donald Astbury – a strange man with secrets.
All the discoveries leading up to this point is fairly intriguing but
then the narrative unexpectedly plunged into Hitchockian territory that did not
fit the rest of the book. While it was a surprise, the twist would have been
more effective had there been a steady and consistent buildup over the course
of the story. Despite the “happy” ending, The Midnight Rose was
ultimately uneven and unsatisfying. Not the level of Kate Morton, more a faint
taste.