The Midnight Rose

Lucinda Riley

GET ready to be swept away by a haunting romance that spans one century, two continents and four generations as the account of an Indian girl’s life in the heyday of the British Raj unfolds over 670 pages of compulsive storytelling.

When Lucinda Riley (pictured below) tragically died from cancer in June of 2021, she left behind a dazzling legacy of novels, not least her groundbreaking Seven Sisters series. Her gift was to write adventures transporting readers from the pedestrian realities of everyday life to worlds past and present, and on wild adventures in diverse, exciting and colourful locations.

And The Midnight Rose, her enthralling and newly republished 2014 novel, is epic in every sense… a vast, multi-layered story which glides from the glittering palaces of India to the majestic stately homes of England, and encompasses lush landscapes and life-changing events of 20^th century history. Weaving backwards and forwards through time to unpick a tumultuous and tragic tale full of powerful emotions and complex themes, The Midnight Rose delivers pride, passion, prejudice and a vibrant cast of eclectic characters portraying human beings at their best and worst.

When her father dies in 1909, nine-year-old Anahita Chavan and her widowed mother, from a noble but impoverished family, are forced to move into the communal society of the Moon Palace in Jaipur in the service of their wealthy relatives.

Anni, as she is known, has inherited her mother’s feminine gifts of sight and healing and has a sound education in English, history and science thanks to the radical ideas of her late poet-philosopher father.

In 1911, at the Coronation Durbar for King George V, Anni meets Princess Indira, youngest daughter of the Maharaja of Cooch Behar and his wife Ayesha, a woman famous for her beauty and the unprecedented informality of her royal court.

Anni forms a close friendship with the headstrong Indira and is allowed to leave her home in Jaipur to become the princess’s official companion at the Cooch Behar Palace in the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas. When the girls are 14, Anni accompanies Indira to school in England but on the outbreak of war, they are evacuated to Astbury Hall in Devon, home of the widow of a former British official in Cooch Behar. Feeling isolated by a distinct cooling in her friendship with Indira, Anni finds consolation in a mutual attachment with young Donald Astbury, a blond Adonis and reluctant heir to the magnificent, remote Astbury Estate. But as their relationship blossoms, his scheming, cold and arrogant mother Lady Maud Astbury is appalled, and will do anything to keep them apart...

Ninety years later, Rebecca Bradley, a young American film star, has the world at her feet but when her turbulent relationship with her equally famous boyfriend takes an unexpected turn, she is relieved that her latest role will take her away from the glare of publicity to England. Shortly after filming begins at crumbling Astbury Hall, Ari Malik, Anni’s great-grandson, arrives unexpectedly on a quest for his family’s past. And what he and Rebecca discover will unravel the dark secrets that still haunt the blighted Astbury dynasty.

Think Downton Abbey but with more grit and gravitas, and with the added excitement and exoticism of scenes played out against a breathtaking Himalayan backdrop, as readers are immersed in Anahita’s action-packed passage from rural India through 100 years of history and unprecedented personal, political and social change. Blending high emotions with rich period detail, romance, drama and social awareness, Riley’s atmospheric novel paints pictures with words and effortlessly transports us between historical periods and far-flung continents.

From the pressures of celebrity and a 21^st century film set to the cloistered intensity of the women’s quarters in an Indian palace, The Midnight Rose is beautifully written and impeccably researched. Romantic fiction at its most memorable and captivating.
(Pan, paperback, £9.99)