A Forlorn Hope (The Fitzgeralds of Dublin Book 4)


Fiction - Historical - Event/Era
361 Pages
Reviewed on 12/20/2020
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Author Biography

Lorna Peel is an author of historical fiction and mystery romance novels set in Ireland and the UK. Lorna was born in England and lived in North Wales until her family moved to Ireland to become farmers, which is a book in itself! She lives in rural Ireland, where she writes, researches her family history, grows fruit and vegetables and keeps chickens and a guinea hen.

    Book Review

Reviewed by Heather Osborne for Readers' Favorite

A Forlorn Hope by Lorna Peel is the fourth book in The Fitzgeralds of Dublin historical family saga. We continue on our journey following the lives of Will and his wife, Isobel, encountering a few more trials and tribulations, this time involving Will’s parents, including an ill-thought-out match of Will’s friend, Fred’s widow, and another character from Isobel’s brother’s past. I really don’t want to give away too much because this series should be read in order to get the full story of all the characters. Needless to say, I was left wondering if Will and Isobel will ever be left in peace to raise their children and nephew!

I was very pleased to gather from the author’s website that this will not be the last book in the series, with book five to come in 2021. I fully appreciated the barriers Lorna Peel breaks with her revolutionary characters, who would have been, no doubt, unconventional at the time. Still, the historical research is sound, and that’s something I always appreciate with historical fiction novels. I did not find this to be a novel I could put down and easily come back to, as there were several storylines going at once; however, Peel does handle them masterfully. I am very excited to see where the Fitzgerald family ends up, and will certainly look for book five when it comes out. A Forlorn Hope by Lorna Peel certainly brings up some controversial topics but doesn’t lean on the stereotypical mantra of everything bad happening to the poor. It’s very refreshing to see upper-middle-class families facing the same challenges. I would certainly recommend this saga to anyone who wants to delve deeper into the world of late 1800s Dublin.