Although this book is about silk weaving in the 18th century, it revolves around 2 women from different end of society - a prostitute and a rich weaver's wife. It takes a little while to get into the characters as nearly all are not very nice including Sarah and Esther. I was interested to learn that Esther is loosely based on a real person. Despite reservations at the beginning I enjoyed the book and was glad to have read it.

I am a sucker for a pretty book cover, which was what attracted me to this book.  Told in the alternating first-person accounts of two women with different, but interlaced lives.   It surprised me to read that this is the author’s debut novel as the writing is much more assured than most. It has been likened to the work of Tracy Chevalier and that is a fair comparison. 

The opening chapter was brilliant, and possibly the best one I have read in a long time.  Sara, an adolescent sent away to London and lured into prostitution with opium-laced hot chocolate.  The madam who traps these children is one of the most wonderfully evil characters I have read for a long time.  The author gets the tension just right, and I felt drawn into the story almost immediately.

The other account is from Esther.  She is a woman married into a Huguenot family and the silk industry.  The character,  loosely based on Anna Maria Garthwaite, a historical figure,  famed for her silk designs.  She married her husband for love but finds herself constrained by his conservative view that a woman’s place is managing the home.

These alternating accounts tell a story of the silk industry, the masters and journeymen and the tensions between them.  Of the early trade unions and the violent uprisings encouraged by such.

Both of the protagonists are fairly well-rounded characters.  At times I became quite frustrated at Sara but she is a silly little teenage girl and makes stupid choices as you would expect.   Esther grew on me, at first she seemed to be overly prim, but as the story progressed, she seems to become more human, probably as we see she doesn’t have a hold on everything.  The ending was bittersweet and satisfying.

I absolutely adored this. It's made me want to conduct a literary London tour, visiting the silks at the V&A, the Foundling Museum, and beautiful Spitalfields!

Wonderfully written tale which weaved a story so well I felt I was there amongst the silks.
Very easy to get totally absorbed, despite the sometime harrowing narrative.

What an interesting novel. It is based around the wife of a Huguenot silk weaver with religious pretensions and of a young woman who came to London from a country house and falls into the wrong hands. Early on in the story the women meet up and although they never really get on, the book weaves it's way around their ensuing relationships. A very interesting time in London history is portrayed; well researched and also covers the rebellion between the journeymen and the Huguenot's of the silk trade. I enjoyed the whole piece although I never liked any of the characters portrayed. A good read.

This book is set in 1768 amidst a decline in the silk printing industry within the Huguenot community in Spitalfields, London. There is unrest among the skilled loom operators who work for little return as part of a cottage industry which is threatened by calico imports.

The book tells two overlapping and contrasting stories. Esther Thorel is the well-to-do wife of Elias Thorel a master silk weaver and a producer of high quality woven silk. She is a frustrated artist and unhappy in her marriage. Her husband is dismissive and taciturn, focused only on the silk trade.

Meanwhile, Sara Kemp is a poor country girl who has arrived in London with almost nothing and has quickly been solicited and forced into prostitution by a madam called Mrs Swann at a place called The Wig and Feathers. She and Esther come together when Esther finds Sara being ill treated by Mrs Swann and sends her a Bible – she has some to support the charitable work of the Huguenot church.

The next bit is fairly predictable. Sarah ends up as the maidservant to Esther and works her way into the household. She remains something of an independent spirit and is nosy but her presence allows Esther to develop as a person. The other thing which helps is the presence of a weaver in the attic, funded by Elias because he is thought to have special talent. Esther would like to see her art turned into silk designs and although Elias is dismissive she works her way into persuading the weaver in the attic to have a go at doing this.

Meanwhile, Sara has found a weaver of her own who is involved with an emergent union movement. It all ends badly, very badly, but Sara, accompanied by the weaver’s child, finds a way back to the country and is enthusiastically greeted by her mother. Esther, through a circuitous route, is finally accepted by her husband as a talented silk designer.

It isn’t a bad book. The portrayal of 18th-century life in the poorer end of London is quite well developed and you could learn a bit about weaving and history. It would have been easy to have made Sarah into a poor victim with a heart of gold but she is actually quite feisty, recognising how being a whore pays better than being a servant, holding her own with the other servants and occasionally speaking her mind.

That isn’t enough to compensate for the slightly predictable unfolding of the story and some wooden description. Elias as a character is not really developed and I would have liked to see Esther grieve a little more for the weaver she manipulated. Other than that, it is an easy read and a bit better than much run-of-the-mill historical fiction.

Could not put this book down. Skilfully weaving the tales of a down at heel girl with a master silk weaver and his family, Blackberry and Wild Rose paints a picture of the eighteenth century, warts and all. But it’s so beautifully written and engaging, that even the snobbery and hypocrisy of the times are understandable from several perspectives.

The author has clearly spent time researching silk weavers, pattern making and the historical context as she weaves a coherent and dramatic tale. This is absorbing and engaging as a historical novel should be and left me wanting to read on into the small hours. Beautifully descriptive in places without overloading on details, you can easily imagine the streets of London and the weavers looms...

A fascinating read and left me wanting to know more - both historical and what happened next for some of the main characters. Reminds me a little of the Minaturist, but if only the Minaturist was as good as Blackberry and Wild Rose .5*.

How our lives are an intricate cloth with seemingly straight lines of warp but unpredictable threads of weft thrown across by the shuttle - some coarse, some fine, making beautiful patterns or spoiling the cloth. I loved this book with all its symbols and analogies drawn from the stories of 18th century Huguenot weavers in Spitalfields. Told alternatingly by Sara, a country girl sent to London for “a better life” but first lured into a brothel, and Ethel, a master weaver’s wife that takes Sara on as her lady’s maid. Apart from their outward lives, they both harbour secrets and desires within their worlds, that could not be more different and yet are quite similar.
This close-knit and oppressive weaving community is beautifully brought to life, its characters clear-cut and convincing in their beliefs and motivation. Outward appearances, loyalties, greed and simmering tensions are portrayed so that the reader is drawn into the events in this community’s cloth of life.

Beautiful, accurate descriptions of life of silk weavers let down by slightly unbelievable characters.

I loved this book from the beginning. The Characters were strong and I liked the way it was told from each side of the two main characters. It is centered around the wife of a Huguenot who's family have rejected him because he married outside of them and of a young woman who came to London after being sent away by her Mum. Theses ladies paths meet. The story is very well researched and details the rebellion between the journeymen and the Huguenot's.

I enjoyed it immensely and will look for more stories by this author.

Blackberry and Wild Rose is a fictional account of the historical rebellion between the Heugenot and UK silk weavers in the mid-1700's Spitalfield area of London. It is a well researched book which piqued my interest enough to make me google more about the history of silk and journeymen during that time.

It will appeal to lovers of historical fiction who like an easy read to while away a few hours.

I feel that I enjoyed the historical aspects of this book far more than the interpersonal dramas within- the characters are all fairly flimsy with little to no deviance from their stereotypical archetypes and would be cosily at home in a BBC series. The Downton Abbey bits aside though, I learned a lot about a subject that I was previously unaware of, with an interest in finding out more. That goes especially for the inspiration for Esther, a real life silk designer in her own right during a time when women were still treated as second class citizens or worse.

A very interesting book. The Huegenots had to leave France due to religious persecution and brought their skill in lace weaving to London. It was very much a man's world - as the world was at time. This book is about 2 very different women from the opposite ends of the social scale who come together, in London. Esther is the wife of a lace manager and Sara, the daughter of a servant, that Esther saves from a life of prostitution. The story is told in alternating chapters from their points of view.

I enjoyed it.

Sonia Velton’s Blackberry and Wild Rose offers a fictional account of the historical rebellion between the Heugenot and UK silk weavers in the mid-1700s. Although I enjoyed the simplistic approach to the subject I was expecting a more intricate and convoluted plot line to the novel with more fully realised central characters. However, as a bit of light reading I found it entertaining and non-taxing.

I love historical fiction, and I enjoyed this book. It has a gorgeous cover reflecting the Silk weaving times back in times, in London. I think the author did a good research.
I liked to read about the silk weavers, the tension between masters and the journeyman. I found it original and was curious to learn about these.
The household part where we had 2 women narrating the story was a bit predictable. Romances, revenge, love, etc. The combination of these 2 aspects made the story an easy, entertaining read.
Overall, it was a solid historical fiction debut.

Thanks a lot to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC.

Sonia Velton's first novel draws the reader into the little-known world of the English eighteenth century silk weavers - their artistry, their politics, their rebellions and their hardships. The story is similar to Jessie Burton's 'The Miniaturists', set in the same decade, in that we are made aware early on in the novel that we have been taken into a house of secrets and unhappiness at odds with the seemingly conventional surface. Master weaver Elias Thorel and his childless wife Esther both appear to be decent people. He allows one of his journeyman weavers to use his own loom to weave a beautiful tapestry so that the latter may qualify to become a Master Weaver whilst Esther takes in Sara Kemp, a young prostitute who soon inveigles her way into becoming her mistress's lady's maid. Over the course of a year Esther becomes involved with both 'charity' cases in ways that she would never have predicted.

The author writes convincingly about domestic duties, the everyday chaos on the London streets and the weavers' craft. As one would expect this is a world in which men have all the power and any female acts of rebellion, however small, are quickly quashed. Unfortunately, it is more difficult to believe in some of the characters' motivation and behaviour. For example, when at the beginning of the novel literate, respectable Sara steps down from a carriage fresh from the country clutching a note on which is the address of her mother's friend with whom she is staying, would she really forget it so thoroughly as to have no option but to remain at the Wig and Feathers brothel, plying her new trade docilely for several months? Would the orphan Ives, devoted to his kind uncle, weaver Bisby Lambert, really be so easily and drastically led astray by the far less charismatic John Barnstaple?

There's plenty going on in this novel and, whilst the balance between plot and character motivation is not entirely successful, Sonia Velton's research ensures that we learn a little about the art of silk weaving. An interesting if not riveting read.

My thanks to NetGalley and Quercus for a copy of the novel in exchange for a fair review.

A very entertaining, honest and educational story! Educational in that I learned about journeymen and the weaving industry in Spitalfields in the eighteenth century, honest in that it revealed just how hard life was for women back then, whether they be rich or poor and entertaining as an actual story. I found the two characters quite fascinating in that neither were heroines and life was hard for two extremely different reasons. The conclusion was inevitable and poignant though I did feel that Sarah’s return to her mother was a little too convenient and easy. It plodded a little at times but on the whole, a good yarn!

The book starts with a traumatic bang for the character Sara as she is tricked into life as a prostitute working from one of the city brothels. A chance encounter with Esther, the wife of a silk merchant, entangles the lives of the two women as they navigate what it means to be a woman in the 18th century. I really enjoyed reading about the two women and how they both push against the restraints of society in their desire for a fulfilling life. The book has a nice pace and the themes that often crop up in a historical romance are well handled; evil madam, greedy business man, unmarried mother, rivalry between the servants etc..
The book has been compared to The Miniaturist, but I found that the characters weren't as richly drawn in this book, and nor was the book quite as atmospheric. All in all, it is a nice read and my thanks go to the publishers and Net Galley for the advanced copy in return for an honest review

Historical fiction wins my heart once again. The cover art for this alone was enough to make me fall head over heels in love with this book.

This is an atmospheric novel set in Spitalfields, a parish in London in the late 18th century. Now I love a historical fiction novel. But, tell me it’s historical fiction novel set in England? You’ve instantly piqued my interest. This is an area filled with the homes of respectable merchants and Huguenot weavers. Neighbouring them, however, are brothels, pubs and a bustling marketplace, a clear juxtaposition laid out before us between the social classes.

‘When a young girl from the country arrives in London, she is like a caterpillar on a leaf, just waiting for the next bird to pass by.’

A young Sara Kemp arrives in Spitalfields bright-eyed and optimist, ready to seize any opportunity which comes her way. Her nativity, however, leads her to be tricked into working in a brothel.

Esther, on the other hand, is a respectable woman married to a master silk weaver. While distributing Bibles in the bordering poor quarters of Spitalfields, Esther witnesses Sara being harassed by her Madam outside the brothel. In her desire to help her less fortunate neighbours, Esther rescues her and offers her employment as her maid. As their lives overlap, the relationship they develop is an uneasy one.

Sara, although appearing grateful in front of her, resents how her mistress is blind to the hypocrisy of her own household. Meanwhile, Esther is so wrapped up in her own affairs that she perceives Sara as nothing but a lady’s maid doing her job. She has painted her own designs all her life, her dream of them being woven into fine silk appearing to be seemingly possible upon marrying her husband, Elias. However, he laughs at and belittles her ambition. What woman could possibly work among the silk-weavers?

‘Elias thinks that people are moulded like jelly by their choices, and, once set, they can never be anything else.’

Determined not to let her husband thwart her dreams, she soon forms a relationship with the apprentice journeyman who works in their garret to weave his masterpiece. Events unfold, and men disrupt the forging friendship of the women. With ulterior motives and endless secrets, a tale of betrayal, discretion and ambition unravels before us inevitably resulting in chaos.

Despite the oppressive society in which they live, Esther and Sara are two headstrong women who are determined to follow their dreams. They’re believable characters who, although from opposite worlds, have stories just as compelling as the other.

Velton’s elegant prose and rich descriptions made the scenes of London’s East End leap out from the pages. There’s no doubt that a great amount of research was carried out, resulting in a story that didn’t only entertain, but educated. I didn’t expect to be fascinated by the lives of silk weavers or trade unions, but this story had me in its grip.

They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but Blackberry and Wild Rose is a story just as beautiful and elegant as the silk illustration we see before us. This is a perfect novel for fellow lovers of historical fiction which will leave you yearning for more.

Thanks to NetGalley and Quercus Books for providing me we an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

How could I fail to be drawn to a book with such a beautiful cover and evocative title? In addition, the story is based loosely on true events which I always find a draw.

The 'blackberry and wild rose' of the title is the name given to a design of silk, and it felt to me that this story gradually emerged as a glorious masterpiece, just like the silk woven in the book gradually emerges from the loom. Slowly, slowly the lives of Esther and Sara intertwine like the intricate design in Esther's silk, and while the lives of the two women are very different on the surface, both will suffer injustice, betrayal and loss.

Based in 1768, Esther Thorel is the wife of a Huguenot silk weaver, who rescues Sara Kemp from a life of prostitution, blind to the fact that in many ways Sara is more imprisoned in her new life as a maid than she ever was before. As Sara struggles to come to terms with the debt which binds her to Esther, Esther struggles equally in a loveless and childless marriage.

The story is told by Esther and Sara. Both are very strong characters and battle with the restrictions they find in their lives. For Esther the release comes through her painting, for Sara it is escape at night from the household to the arms of her lover. But as both women break the rules, there is an inevitable reckoning when someone will suffer.

There are some wonderful minor characters, including the wonderful 'French' chef who insists on being called Monsieur and whose culinary skills leave a lot to be desired and the dreadful Mrs Swann who ensnares Sara when she first arrives in London.

This book really drew me into 18th century London. Although the unrest of the two women is central to the story, the backdrop is the wider industrial unrest between the journeyman silk weavers and their masters and the impact of imported cloth. At times, I found the story of Esther and Sara a bit stifling (as they themselves feel stifled in their roles) so the grittier scenes in London were a welcome change of scene.

I will certainly look out for future books by Sonia Velton.

My thanks to Quercus Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book.