Review: Great Short Regency
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 6, 2013
Walker applies her craft well with an intriguing plot, interesting characters and authentic historical background. In The Shamrock & The Rose, Morgan O'Connell is a man focused on working toward his beloved Ireland having a voice in the British Parliament. He's handsome, charming and possesses street sense, in spite of having been raised in the privileged atmosphere created by his famous cousin, Danial O'Connell, the dashing Irish Barrister dedicated to leading the Catholic Irish to emancipation. Unlike so many men of the gentry, Morgan admires a woman with a mind of her own, especially where beauty is involved in tandem with an adventurous spirit.Rose Collingwood, beautiful and willing to ignore traditional roles, is a nineteenth century woman determined not to be forced into the confining life prescribed for her--a marriage in which the woman has no opinions of her own or an opportunity to seek a personal dream.Defying the mores of her society, Rose pursues an acting career. To preserve her good name, she assumes a stage name and resides with the Dowager Countess of Claremont whose home and social status are far removed from London's Theatre Royal at Haymarket where Rose has been hired to play Portia in Shapespeare's The Merchant of Venice.Morgan, already enchanted by Lilly Underwood, the beautiful actress playing Portia, accidentally comes across an admirer's Valentine note to the actress. Unbeknownst to Morgan, she is really Rose Collingwood, daughter of English Admiral Collingwood, a dead hero. Instead of delivering the possible Valentine to the theater, Morgan follows the servant sent to collect Miss  Underwood's mail and finds himself at the Dowager's residence. Expecting to seduce Lily, the lovely actress, he meets his destiny instead and now must change his seduction plans to a courtship that seems to have no future for an English Rose and an Irish Shamrock. Although both are Protestant, their private worlds are at odds. To further complicate his courtship, an anonymous and somewhat sinister admirer seems obsessed with the actress and means to have her with or without her consent. On Rose's first outing with the charming Irishman, an unexpected accident turns into a compromising situation that could ruin Rose's good name, her reputation and embarrass her familyAside from never failing to provide her readers with good storytelling, compelling plots and interesting characters, Walker's research is meticulous, thus producing that special something to her writing that makes it a page turner without rewriting or ignoring historical facts.