Lost Roses Book Novels & Stories

Finally got around to 'Lost Roses' last month, mostly because I loved 'Lilac Girls' so much. Honestly, I found the characters here a bit harder to lock onto at first—the book jumps between three women across World War I, which is a lot. Caroline Ferriday is the link from the previous novel, an American socialite trying to help, but she felt more like a connector than a fully standalone focus for me. The real heart, I think, is with the two Russian women: Eliza, the aristocrat fleeing the revolution with her family, and Sofya, her cousin who stays behind and gets trapped in the chaos. Their sections had this raw, desperate energy that Caroline's philanthropic missions lacked.

Eliza's journey from a life of balls and servants to being a refugee scrubbing floors in Paris was brutal. You see her privilege stripped away layer by layer. Sofya's plot is even darker, hiding from the Bolsheviks in her own country. The book is really about how war shreds these lives in different ways, depending on where you stand. I wish it had stuck with just the Russian perspectives; Caroline's story, while noble, kept pulling me out of the more intense atmosphere.

Martha Hall Kelly's 'Lost Roses' digs into the lives of three women just before and during the First World War, focusing on Eliza Ferriday and her mother Caroline—wealthy New Yorkers who are philanthropists—and a young Russian aristocrat, Sofya Streshnayva. The heart of the story is Sofya’s perspective, as the novel explores the complete societal collapse she faces during the Russian Revolution. While 'Lilac Girls' concentrated on WWII and the Ravensbrück concentration camp, this prequel shifts to a more domestic, but no less brutal, conflict.

It gets pretty dark. We see Sofya lose everything: her family's estate, her status, any sense of safety. The narrative contrasts her desperation with Eliza's relatively stable, though worried, life in America, as Eliza tries to help Russian refugees. Honestly, I sometimes felt the American chapters dragged a bit, like I was just waiting to get back to the chaos in Russia. But that contrast is probably the point—showing how the war shattered one world while another watched from a distance, trying to understand.

If you're after the paperback or hardcover of 'Lost Roses', Amazon usually has stock with Prime shipping, and their 'look inside' feature lets you check a sample first. I've also seen it on the shelves at Barnes & Noble, though you might want to call your local store to confirm it's in.

A place people sometimes forget is Bookshop.org—it supports independent bookstores, and I've had good luck finding titles there when they're out of stock elsewhere. The pricing is competitive with the big retailers, too.

For a digital copy, Kobo or Apple Books are solid choices if you're not tied to the Kindle ecosystem. I ended up getting the audiobook version on Audible because the narration is really well done for the historical setting.