The Winter Rose

This is the sequel to The Tea Rose that I read in December 2012.  It is a trilogy, but I don't know if I will make it to book three.  If I do, I think it will be later this year or maybe next. I really enjoyed Book One.  I enjoyed Book Two as well, to a certain extent.  There did come a time where my belief could no longer remain suspended.  We find ourselves meeting Fiona and Joe again, now happily married. This time around, however the focus of the story is Sid Malone (Fiona's criminal brother) and his love life.  He falls for India Selwyn Jones, a physician working in the slums of London. India is just as much the strong heroine as Fiona was in The Tea Rose (up to a certain point....then she gets a bit bland). Now, as we all know, falling in love with a strong-willed good girl is where all the problems start for a bad boy and thus the story takes off and we travel from London to Africa to California. There is love, deception, redemption, and adventure.  I did find myself rolling my eyes at some of the "coincidences" that occurred and the blatant stupidity of some of the characters to see what was going on in front of their own eyes.  I also began to get upset with the characters because if only they would speak a few words of truth instead of trying to be so secretive about every damn thing there wouldn't have been so much drama, and perhaps 200 pages could have been shaved off the 700+ page volume.  I just needed to accept it for the soap opera that it was.  I do think it was a solid sequel, but it didn't leave me excited for the third installment. Nice travel read on an e-reader if you don't want to lug the heavy tome with you.