WOW! Just WOW! Ashley Clark is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors, and with good reason. I don't normally like dual time or time slip novels, but the Heirloom Secrets series is changing my mind on that regard. It may be that Ashley's writing abilities are such that she makes the dual times a cohesive whole. That's the only thing I can attribute it to.
Where the Last Rose Blooms is the final in the Heirloom Secrets series and continues the story of Millie's ancestors, both on and off the plantation. In this final edition, Clara and Rose take on spying for the Union during the Civil War with Rose making coded messages into embroidered samplers using the language of flowers as a basis for the code. Rose's talents with a needle are beyond compare and her samplers are "sold" to operatives in order to pass on the messages.
In the present day, Alice runs a florist shop with her aunt who raised her after her mother disappeared in Hurricane Katrina. When she gets a call from her father saying he's selling the old family home so that he can buy his "new" wife a beach house, she goes to explore the attic of the house to see if there is anything she wants in the house. She finds three of Rose's samplers and begins the research into the samplers to find out what they mean.
Ashley brings the three stories full circle and ties up all the loose ends quite satisfactorily. She heads each chapter with the character's name, and this keeps confusion to a minimum. This is one of the best series I've read in a long time. Five Stars, Two Thumbs Up, and an embroidered rose on a sampler.
Bethany House and NetGalley.com provided the copy I read for this review. All opinions expressed are solely my own.
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