Summary: A Christmas Promise (Christmas Stories #7) by Anne Perry
Anne Perry’s Victorian Christmas novels have attracted as many faithful readers as her two New York Times bestselling series featuring investigators Thomas Pitt and William Monk. A Christmas Promise is the seventh in Perry’s holiday series, and it will surely bring joy to this special season.
Three days before Christmas, in the freezing slums of London’s East End, thirteen-year-old Gracie Phipps encounters Minnie Maude Mudway, who is only eight, alone, and determined to find her friend Charlie.
However Charlie is no ordinary companion: He is a donkey who belonged to Minnie Maude’s Uncle Alf. Gracie is shocked to learn that only the day before, someone brutally murdered Uncle Alf and made off with his rag-and-bones cart and the beloved beast who pulled it. Now, come hell or high water, Minnie Maude means to rescue Charlie–and Gracie decides to help. But the path that Uncle Alf had taken to his death was not his regular route, and in his cart were not just the usual bits of worn silver and china but also, the children are told, a dazzling golden box. What its contents may have been no one can say, for, like Charlie and the cart, it too has vanished.
Uncertain where their four-legged friend may be, the children are drawn into an adult world far beyond their innocent imaginings. And in a shop gleaming with beautiful objects, they recruit an unexpected ally: Mr. Balthasar, who warns them that the shining prize may be a Pandora’s box of evil.
Set in the Victorian world where Anne Perry reigns supreme, A Christmas Promise culminates in a radiant finale that will remain with you long after the final page is turned.
Book Review: A Christmas Promise (Christmas Stories #7) by Anne Perry
Gracie Phipps goes on a quest together with Minnie Maude Mudway to find the rag-and-bone donkey named Charlie which has vanished after its owner suffered a fatal incident. The children try to find the donky themselves, but eventually realize they need help from an adult.
I found it touching that Gracie decides to confide in her old neighbor, Mr. Wiggins, who gives her advice on who she can trust with her information.
There is, for me, a Dickensian feel to the story as the plot is set in the poorest areas of London where people are trying to scrape by on next to nothing. The general living conditions in London’s East End did not exactly seem comfortable, to put it mildly. Descriptions of how Christmas was celebrated I feel are similar to those in the Scrooge story written in 1843. There seemed to be a village feel in the local areas of the city. It makes sense as it consisted of villages already grown together.
8 year old Minnie Maude, whose uncle died, is touchingly innocent and vulnerable at the same time as she has to deal with the serious accident that happened to her uncle. She is lucky to meet Gracie who looks out for her in spite of her own tight schedule doing chores and errands every day, all day, which was the normal thing for children at the time. It brings me close to tears that Gracie’s dream is to learn how to read, which we all take for granted today.
I get a Christmas feel reading about the snow, sleet and wind the children have to deal with while they walk past the more well-to-do households who have Christmas decorations up. Trying to stay warm and dry in their thin clothing and bad shoes didn’t seem easy. The story has an interesting mix of serious issues and Christmas theme which Anne Perry does so well in these Christmas novellas. The constant tea-drinking lightens the mood of the story somewhat. Must say I quite enjoy that whenever I read stories set in Britain. Sometimes I found it an entertaining puzzle to work out the meaning of the written cockney dialect. I felt it added an authenticity to the story.
A Christmas Promise is recommended for fans of Anne Perry’s work and readers of Crime Fiction in general.
My rating: 4 stars / 5
There is, for me, a Dickensian feel to the story as the plot is set in the poorest areas of London where people are trying to scrape by on next to nothing. The general living conditions in London’s East End did not exactly seem comfortable, to put it mildly. Descriptions of how Christmas was celebrated I feel are similar to those in the Scrooge story written in 1843. There seemed to be a village feel in the local areas of the city. It makes sense as it consisted of villages already grown together.
8 year old Minnie Maude, whose uncle died, is touchingly innocent and vulnerable at the same time as she has to deal with the serious accident that happened to her uncle. She is lucky to meet Gracie who looks out for her in spite of her own tight schedule doing chores and errands every day, all day, which was the normal thing for children at the time. It brings me close to tears that Gracie’s dream is to learn how to read, which we all take for granted today.
I get a Christmas feel reading about the snow, sleet and wind the children have to deal with while they walk past the more well-to-do households who have Christmas decorations up. Trying to stay warm and dry in their thin clothing and bad shoes didn’t seem easy. The story has an interesting mix of serious issues and Christmas theme which Anne Perry does so well in these Christmas novellas. The constant tea-drinking lightens the mood of the story somewhat. Must say I quite enjoy that whenever I read stories set in Britain. Sometimes I found it an entertaining puzzle to work out the meaning of the written cockney dialect. I felt it added an authenticity to the story.
A Christmas Promise is recommended for fans of Anne Perry’s work and readers of Crime Fiction in general.
My rating: 4 stars / 5
(All opinions in this review are my own.
About The Author
Anne Perry is the bestselling author of two acclaimed series set in Victorian England: the William Monk novels, including Dark Assassin and The Shifting Tide, and the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels, including The Cater Street Hangman, Calandar Square, Buckingham Palace Gardens and Long Spoon Lane. She is also the author of the World War I novels No Graves As Yet, Shoulder the Sky, Angels in the Gloom, At Some Disputed Barricade, and We Shall Not Sleep, as well as six holiday novels, most recently A Christmas Grace. Anne Perry lives in Scotland. (From Amazon)
To learn more about the author, visit www.anneperry.co.uk
