Victorian Coming of Age Adventure

The Forbidden Orchid

By Sharon Biggs Waller

Age Range: 12 and up

Grade Level: 7 and up

Hardcover: 416 pages

Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers (March 8, 2016)

ISBN-10: 0451474112

ISBN-13: 978-0451474117

Approximate Lexile: 1160

 

Publisher’s Blurb:

Staid, responsible Elodie Buchanan is the eldest of ten sisters growing up in a small English market town in 1861. The girls barely know their father, a plant hunter usually off adventuring through China, more myth than man. Then disaster strikes: Mr. Buchanan reneges on his contract to collect an extremely rare and valuable orchid. He will be thrown into debtors’ prison while his daughters are sent to the orphanage and the workhouse.

Elodie can’t stand by and see her family destroyed, so she persuades her father to return to China once more to try to hunt down the flower—only this time, despite everything she knows about her place in society, Elodie goes with him. She has never before left her village, but what starts as fear turns to wonder as she adapts to seafaring life aboard the tea clipper The Osprey, and later to the new sights, dangers, and romance of China. She comes to find that both the world and her place in it are so much bigger than she’d ever dreamed. But now, even if she can find the orchid, how can she ever go back to being the staid, responsible Elodie that everybody needs?

 

My Thoughts:

An enjoyable story about a young woman who comes of age. Elodie has been her mother’s help and support in the absence of her father, but a series of events pushes her into the sudden decision to travel with her father and help him. In doing this, she finds out just what she is capable of and what she wants to do. The fact that there’s a man involved doesn’t hurt—there’s just enough chaste romance for it to be a bonus, without being the focus.

 

Some have criticized Elodie for being naïve, but let’s not forget the time in which she lives—women were kept naïve on purpose, for fear that anything knowledge of sex or the harder things in life might cause her to swoon.

 

Speaking of the time, the author provides a fairly extensive bibliography of works she consulted in research of the time, place and issues of this story.

 

The characters are believable, if sometimes frustrating. Modern female readers will find the restrictions placed on Elodie to be outrageously annoying. Again, remember the context.

 

Descriptions are good; the book is well-edited. Language is appropriate to the target age group.

 

Possible Objectionable Material:

Only the mildest of Victorian cursing. Some violence and threats of violence. A man and woman share a bed, but nothing happens.

 

Who Might Like This Book:

Those who like romance, a little adventure, coming of age. Definitely skews to female audiences; while there are male characters, they are mainly secondary, except for the love interest. The target age range is appropriate.

 

Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC.