Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Watching the Roses, 7 Aug 2001
This book is the second in the 'Egerton Hall' trilogy, but you can read it on its own without reading the others I liked the way this book was told both describing the present and past events, until the past caught up with the present near the end of the book and everything was explained. As the story was loosely based on 'Sleeping Beauty.' it was intresting spotting the references to the fairy tale and I particularly liked the end of this book as I thought it was a really clever way of modernizing the end of this fairy tale. The first book in the trilogy, 'The Tower Room.' is almost as good.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Haunting, sad and touching, 18 Oct 2006
Watching the roses is, in a word, excellent. I seriously will never view the story of Sleeping Beauty in the same light again. It is quite a short book, but every word conts and that is what makes it so beautiful.Even though you guess what happens quite a short way into the book, I didn't realise the full extent of the terrible event that occured at Alice's 18th birthday party. The story of sleeping Beauty s woven very well into the story, like her pricking her finger on the brooch and all of the aunts. Watcing the Roses was, and is, one of the few books which stayed in my mind long after I put it down. This book will leave you a much richer person after reading it. I was. Read it!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Dark but haunting, 2 May 2003
Having already read 'The Tower Room', first in the series, and been given a taster of this story, I was eager to read it, and I wasn't disappointed. It begins just as 'The Tower Room' did, with 'once upon a time', but the fairy tale atmosphere is far deeper in this book, as it should be, because Alice's life is much more rarified than Megan's. There is a hint of something awful from the first page, drawing you deeper into the story, and more hints are added as you progress, a sense of doom overhanging the heroine. You really get a sense of Alice, an only child surrounded by doting adults who are all much older than her, very sensitive and very close to her two friends Megan and Bella, who also act as her protectors. The reader is also made aware of how unexperienced Alice is with men, and how she finds this lack of experience rather difficult faced with her friends' progress. There are many little details which lift the book above the norm-Alice's hint of foreign blood, her excellence at Art, the rose descriptions which serve as a frame for the story, a nice touch which links it back to the original. Finally, I was also pleased and impressed that Geras makes Alice sound different from Megan, despite both stories being told in the first person. An excellent read which I keep coming back to.
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