GENRE: #Victorian-Christmas-novella #cozy-mystery
My rating: ★★★★☆
I just finished reading "A Christmas Promise" by Anne Perry, and while it's technically a Christmas story, it's less about tinsel and carols and more about those truly important human values we should all be striving for, things like friendship, loyalty, compassion, and good old human warmth. You know, the "stuff that _really_ matters", not just at Christmas but all the time.
This is a mystery story, but not your typical one with detectives and police.
Nope, we've got the murder of a man and the disappearance of a donkey being investigated by two super-poor little girls!
One is driven by her love for the missing donkey and her dead uncle, and the other by pure compassion and friendship.
They bravely face the dark, cold, and scary streets of Victorian London, which is quite something!
London, Victorian era.
It's three days before Christmas, and the East End slums are freezing. That's where thirteen-year-old Gracie Phipps meets Minnie Maude Mudway, who's only eight years old! Minnie Maude is determined to find Charlie, the donkey who belonged to her Uncle Alf. Gracie's shocked when she finds out that someone brutally murdered Uncle Alf _the day before_ and stole his rag cart, along with poor Charlie! Now, Minnie Maude is set on saving Charlie, no matter what, and Gracie decides to help her. Uncle Alf was a ragpicker, and the suspicion is that he had something valuable hidden on his cart. Someone was so desperate that they were willing to kill to get their hands on it!
I did have a little bit of a struggle while I was reading. The dialogue, which is mostly between working-class people, isn't in standard English. It's all contracted words and spelled phonetically – you have to listen to the sound of the words to understand! I guess it's a kind of dialect.
Being Italian, and with English not being my first language, I was a bit thrown at first! But I got used to it, and it didn't stop me from enjoying the story.
Even though there wasn't a traditional investigation, the story kept me in suspense and totally curious about who the culprit might be.
And little Minnie Maude’s constant worry about Charlie, her four-legged friend, really got to me. I'm a big animal lover, so it made me even more anxious to find the poor donkey! I was right there with her, hoping and praying for a happy ending.
I'm often a little disappointed by short stories, because they don't always have time to really delve into the characters and themes. But this author did an amazing job of creating a vivid setting and making me feel deeply connected to those little girls.
I've had Anne Perry's Christmas stories on my TBR pile for ages, and I feel bad admitting I let my own prejudices hold me back.
She committed a pretty serious crime when she was younger, and it shocked me. Even though religion teaches us to forgive and give people a second chance, I just couldn't get past it.
It's not my place to judge her as a person, but I'm honestly happy I was able to appreciate her talent as a writer. I'm definitely going to read more of her Christmas stories and her longer mystery novels, and I highly recommend you give them a try too!
Thanks for reading my opinion :-)
Join me on FB Tizi Cozy Corner page to be always updated on new posts
FOLLOW ME or ASK MY FRIENDSHIP ON GOODREADS
No comments:
Post a Comment