I really liked this book. There were only a few similarities to Gone with the Wind, such as, the main character lives on a cotton farm and has black hair and green eyes. That's pretty much it.

The book is divided into three parts telling the stories of three different characters, Mary, Percy and Rachel. After Mary's father dies leaving her the family cotton plantation and almost nothing to her mother and brother, her family is torn apart by resentment. Her father knew that if he left the plantati More...

i thought this book was the cause of so many butterflies. and also...so many outbursts! i enjoyed every character, every paragraph, every chapter, ... such a great read.

This week I read Roses by Leila Meacham. Was it ever an exhausting book! Most of the story is told in flashback. The reader knows the end result of the "love triangle" from the beginning of the book, so I was skeptical that I would like it knowing the outcome, but I loved it.

The saga spanning the twentieth century is about three prominent families in the East Texas town of Howbutker. Two of the founding families were direct descendants of the Lancasters and the Yorks, the same families who fough More...

In a small town in East Texas, three families reign - The Warwicks with their lumber fortune, the DuMonts with their high-end department store, and the cotton planting Tolivers. Their friendship unites them; the rules of their friendship keep their bonds strong. Their businesses are never to mingle, loans between the families are never to be exchanged, and, if any party is ever wronged, a red rose for forgiveness is to be given, a white returned to symbolize that the apology has been accepted. F More...

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Leila Meacham nous sert ici une magnifique saga familiale, faite de secrets, d’amour, de sacrifices, d’amitiés, de non-dits. L’auteur mène l’histoire d’une main de maître, c’est à couper le souffle.

Le récit se découpe globalement en trois parties. On revient en premier sur le passé de Mary, sur sa jeunesse et ses erreurs. Cela permet au lecteur de mieux la cerner, de mieux la comprendre. On la voit vivre une passion dévorante avec Percy Warwick. Toutefois, More...

Les roses de Somerset ouvre l’année 2013 dans la toute nouvelle collection Charleston. Cette émanation des Editions Leduc, plus habitué aux ouvrages pratiques se propose de d’offrir aux lecteurs des grands sagas romanesques comme ce livre mais également des romances, de la chicklit, toutes sortes de romans destinés à un public plutôt féminin. Les Roses de Somerset sont en tous cas une excellente entrée en matière car ce livre est une totale réussite.

Cette grande histoire qui s’étale sur tout le More...

"Roses" is the first book I have read by Leila Meacham. I usually skim a few of the previous reviews to get a glimpse at what other reviewers think and how they rate any book I am about to review. I must admit that I am seldomly swayed to change my mind but I am always a little curious to read other people's point of view just the same. Sometimes, I'm right on the mark and other times...

I feel comfortable in comparing "Roses" to other epic novels such as "The Thorn Birds" and "Gone With the Wind More...

This book and I had a love/hate relationship. At times I felt ready to pull my hair out, and other times I was searching for the nearest tissue.

The story was about deciding what is most important in your life, and living with the consequences of those choices. It also showed how our posterity is affected by our actions.

Leila Meacham did a great job creating a story that pulls the reader in. Her characters were well developed (although so many of them were selfish, blind idiots-argh, I'm still m More...

‘If I should ever offend you, I will send a red rose to ask forgiveness. And if ever I receive one tendered for that purpose, I will return a white rose to say that all is forgiven.’

This book starts at the end of the story and thus, the end of the disastrous love affair between Mary Tolliver and Percy Warwick. {I am not ruining anything, you learn that right as you open the book} Therefore, I knew as I was being taken through Mary’s and Percy’s flashbacks, that this part of the story was not goi More...

Leila Meacham's novel centers around two rival farming families, and their offspring and the loves and losses of their offspring. Though the plot is a heartbreaking one, Meacham goes into so much detail that she leaves very little room for the reader to use his or her own imagination. At the same time, she seems to tell the reader how to feel about certain characters and their situations, rather than letting the feelings come naturally. She needs to show the interactions of her characters a bit More...

Leila Meacham has written a magnificent saga of love, family, and tradition where conflicting values arise when loyalty to the family business clashes with personal fulfillment in romance. It is comparable in scope and appeal to Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind" and Collen McCullough's "The Thornbirds".

This book is filled with intense emotions associated with love of the land and cotton business which threatens the survival of the Toliver family after the patriarch, Vernon leaves the fam More...

Hmmm. Biggest problem with this book is that's it's been compared to Gone With The Wind. Just not a good idea in general. It's like saying the new Babe Ruth, the new Michael Jackson, the new Harry Potter, etc. The comparisons always fall short. (Black hair, green eyes, and cotton alone do not a Scarlett O'Hara make.)

The story spans 60 years or so, set in East Texas, and was split into three parts, from the points of view of Mary, Percy, and Rachel. I enjoyed Percy's story best, and that part of More...

Overall, I'd say this book is worth a read. It's a bit reminiscent of Gone With the Wind, but nowhere near as compelling or epic. But it's an interesting love story and family drama. Oh, and there's mild spoilers below, so don't read much further if you don't want a few things revealed.

I think my own values sort of made me impatient with this book. The book treated Mary's choice of Somerset, her cotton farm, over Percy, her "true love," as a mistake. Er, yeah, I couldn't really be too devastated More...

Este libro lo compré por recomendación de Ilse mi cuñada. Decía ella que en Amazon anunciaba que si a uno le había gustado The Thorn Birds que entonces iba a disfrutar este libro. Nada me pareció más lejos de la verdad. Me parece muy ventajoso el servicio de recomendar libros basado en el tipo de lectura que uno disfruta. Sin embargo la calidad de la narración tiene mucho que ver en el por qué uno escoge un autor u otro.
Este libro es una saga multigeneracional que tiene como personajes principa More...

I fear this one is probably a 2 1/2, rather than a 3 star. I wanted to like it; the family stories sounded interesting and the beginning (Mary changing her will) hooked me. But, and it's a big "but", I just couldn't believe in the characters. Maybe my prejudice of the idea of "the land" goes back to the disillusioning classic, The Good Earth, but I had a hard time buying the idea that this land meant more to Mary (and then Rachel) than anything. It was said often enough, but this trait was defin More...

This enthralling stunner, a good old-fashioned read, may herald the overdue return of those delicious doorstop epics from such writers as Barbara Taylor Bradford and Colleen McCullough. Meacham's multigenerational family saga, set in East Texas circa 1914–1985, charts the transformation of Mary Toliver, a wide-eyed 16-year-old heiress, into a calculating cotton plantation queen as hardheaded as Scarlett O'Hara. Her brother, Miles, goes off to WWI, returns home, but then goes back to France to ma More...

Roses By Leila Meacham

When receiving a red rose the receiver will know the sender means to apologize for his or actions in life or in business. If the recipient of the red raised wishes to grant forgiveness and accept the apology he or she will send white rose. Such is the basis for this upcoming novel by Leila Meacham which expands many generations and more than one century to tell.

Mary Tolliver DuMont has little time left and is determined to set the record straight before her death. Living More...

I grabbed this book because of a description comparing it to Gone with The Wind. And while I'm not sure that's the most appropriate comparison, I did quite enjoy this book and tore through it in a single day.

Roses covers three generations, and tells the story of the three founding families of a small East Texas town. At times I felt some of the characters were being petty or single minded, but I bought that as a reality of the characters, rather than a plot contrivance. I believe that people ca More...

I loved this book. My friend lent me 13 books, one of them being Roses and said that Roses was the best of them all. I saw the cover and thought "ugh, old lady-ish" and read it last. However, Roses is a great book. I was blown away, and the old adage still holds "never judge a book by it's cover". I could not believe how much of their lives that Percy & Mary wasted because of stupidity. I was dumb-founded by Mary's mother's mean spirited last gift to her daughter. I wanted Mary & Percy t More...

I won this book as a giveaway - and I was impressed when I received it; beautiful cover, nice solid hardback book. I was even more impressed when I started reading it.

It's got a fair resemblance to Gone With the Wind - I've never read the book but I've seen the movie and Mary is just about as close to Scarlett O'Hara as they come - her obsession with Somerset (the cotton plantation) being the same driving force. This "Scarlett" though is a much more likeable person - driven, yes, but still lovin More...

This book is well-written, however it has two elements that I can't abide. First, if the ending isn't strong it can ruin the whole story for me. The ending wasn't BAD, but it certainly wasn't GOOD either. I liked the ending with Percy and Lucy. They're much more important characters and the end of the story should've been theirs. And second, the story skirts British-style misunderstanding ruining all the characters lives. This is a VERY popular plot line in British novels. Apparently we're to be More...

A few months back, a new release by Leila Meacham called Roses caught our attention and we rushed to download the book on to the nefarious Amazonian Devil Device. A Reader's Respite then promptly forgot all about it. We do this far too frequently these days. Perhaps it's (the booze) a degenerative brain disorder caused by mold and dust in old books. Whatever the cause, the result is dozens and dozens of books purchased and then forgotten about, unread, until we stumble across them months - even More...

Oh. This is one of those books that I wanted to race through, but at the same time I didn't want it to end. Equal turns heartbreaking, frustrating, and satisfying. It's not a "busy" plot. It's not full of action and activity. It doesn't feel like a whole lot actually happens when you consider how it's narrated. It's more a quiet recounting of history. Yet a WHOLE lot really does happen, and you still manage to feel it and breathe with it because it's about FEELINGS more than actions, if that mak More...

So my friend called me a book snob and I think she is right! I really tried with this book - I read it all the way through when there were more interesting books calling out my name, but I could not really find anything in it that I liked.

A big, sweeping, overly dramatic saga straight out of the Gone With the Wind playbook, Roses is the story of Texas tycoons, plantations, birthrights, love, and secrets. Everything you would expect to find in this genre of book is there, and more. All the charac More...

It was a good story, and the end was good. Not bad, not surprising, and I wasn't disappointed. I liked Leila's style which was soft, intelligent, playful. Used the "F" word only ONCE! Amen! Two books before I read Roses I had finished "50 Shades of Grey" and it was quite a difference with regard to style. But, as with both books, it was difficult to put down because the "social-psychologist" in me wants to know what makes people tick, fictional or non-fictional! I loved my literature classes in More...

Roses was an excellent read that immediately pulls the reader into the world of the east Texas families of Toliver, Warwick and Dumont. Spanning over 85 years, this book is epic in scope and while a brick of a book, when you're done reading you wish the story would continue. Roses has a large cast of characters, but probably the three main are Mary Toliver and Percy Warwick, two star-crossed lovers, and Mary's great-niece, Rachel Toliver, whose story emerges in the last third of the book. I've s More...

While walking through a used book store, an elderly woman approached me and asked, "Young lady, would you like to read a GOOD book?" I, of course, said yes! She handed me Roses by Leila Meacham.

If i'm being honest, the old lady-esque cover was giving me second thoughts and the book description made the book sound like another dime a dozen love story. Not necessarily bad, just a pass the time type story. However, I couldn't shake my curiosity when it came to this grandmother's fervent reccomenda More...