Changes

|title=Velvet

|author=Mary Hooper

|reviewer=Linda Lawlor

|buy=Yes

|borrow=Yes

|pages=336

|publisher=Bloomsbury

|website=http://www.maryhooper.co.uk/

|video=kz1t_vW6Xv8

}}

The opening chapter of this book is a roller-coaster of a read. Velvet has fainted while doing back-breaking, gruelling work in a laundry, and risks being sent to the workhouse. Quick thinking saves her job, and the reader relaxes, only to learn a shocking and shameful secret about the heroine we have already begun to like. Her fortunes soon change, in true Dickensian style, but her troubles are not over: this same secret will come back to haunt her (please excuse the pun) and put her in the power of one of the other characters.

The style of the book owes something to Charles Dickens and others, with its mixture of innocent heroines, dreadful deeds and threats of death or dishonour. In some ways the story has a comforting inevitability about it: a character as good and honourable as Velvet deserves a happy ending, after all. But getting to that ending is not as straightforward as the reader might suppose, and she is offered more than one route to financial security and happiness. There is adventure, suspense, warmth and even a little light humour to be had in this book, and it will find many avid fans.

Further reading suggestion: Girls who enjoy historical adventures with a dash of romance and a believable setting will love Mary Hooper's other books. Try [[Fallen Grace by Mary Hooper|Fallen Grace]] about another Victorian orphan in dire straits, [[By Royal Command by Mary Hooper|By Royal Command]] about the court of Elizabeth I, and [[Newes From The Dead by Mary Hooper|Newes From the Dead]] based in 1650.

{{commenthead}}

[[Category:Teens]]