Review: "Lost Roses" by Martha Hall Kelly

We first met Caroline Ferriday in Martha Hall Kelly’s outstanding book Lilac Girls, which tells the story of three separate women and how their lives intertwined during World War II. This novel, Lost Roses, is the prequel and centers around Caroline’s mother, Eliza, and her effort to help her friend, Sofya Streshnayvas, during the Bolshevik uprising during World War 1. Eliza works tirelessly to not only assist the women from Russia who have lost their homes but to help her friends that are in need.

As in her first novel, the storytelling technique keeps you turning pages. Each chapter is told in the first person by a different woman in which the story encompasses. You witness the goodness and the atrocities that each face. You are invested in their lives and feel their pain and suffering. As each chapter ends, you are left in suspense not knowing what will befall them.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who loved Lilac Girls and anyone who has an interest in World War I and the forgotten brutalities that were committed and hidden. It can be read and appreciated by teen to adult. This author leaves you wanting more!!