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A passionate tale of plague, fire, and forbidden love from the acclaimed author of Solomon's Crown
It is 1666, one year after plague has devastated England. Young widow Cecilia Thorowgood is a prisoner, trapped and isolated within her older sister's cavernous London townhouse. At the mercy of a legion of doctors trying to cure her grief with their impatient scalpels, Cecilia shows no sign of improvement. Soon, her sister makes a decision born of desperation: She hires a new physician, someone known for more unusual methods. But he is a foreigner. A Jew. And despite his attempts to save Cecilia, he knows he cannot quell the storm of sorrow that rages inside her. There is no easy cure for melancholy.
David Mendes fled Portugal to seek a new life in London, where he could practice his faith openly and leave the past behind. Still reeling from the loss of his beloved friend and struggling with his religion and his past, David is free and safe in this foreign land but incapable of happiness. The security he has found in London threatens to disappear when he meets Cecilia, and he finds himself torn between his duty to medicine and the beating of his own heart. He is the only one who can see her pain; the glimmers of light she emits, even in her gloom, are enough to make him believe once more in love.
Facing seemingly insurmountable challenges, David and Cecilia must endure prejudice, heartbreak, and calamity before they can be together. The Great Fire is coming—and with the city in flames around them, love has never felt so impossible.
"Set in 17th-century London, this sumptuous romance tells the story of two star-crossed lovers drawn together under tumultuous circumstances...Narrated in alternating points of view and featuring diversity along multiple axes, including religion and LGBTQIA+ identity, this lyrically written and utterly romantic novel from [Natasha] Siegel will appeal to readers of historical fiction and epic love stories." —Library Journal (starred review)
"A breathtakingly beautiful novel about forbidden love in 17th-century London...This book will break you open with its beautiful writing, and readers will find themselves wringing their hands, wondering how on earth David and Cecilia could ever be together...A gorgeous romance about healing from trauma, making peace with grief and finding love where it doesn't seem possible. This glorious follow-up to her debut, Solomon's Crown, firmly establishes Siegel as a writer to watch." —BookPage (starred review)
"A desolate widow finds new hope and forbidden romance in this poignant and commendably diverse historical...Siegel sets this sweeping, emotional story apart by focusing on the experiences of people often overlooked in historical romance. The results are genuinely moving." —Publishers Weekly
"With rich prose and a plethora of delightful period details, shifting between Cecilia's and David's first-person perspectives, the story deftly explores their feelings of unlikely connection, as well as the isolation and hopelessness that can accompany loss of a loved one... . A well-crafted and enchanting historical love story." —Kirkus Reviews
"Poetic, romantic, and steeped in seventeenth-century London, The Phoenix Bride is historical fiction at its best. Natasha Siegel's prose had me hypnotized, and I savored every page of this breathless, forbidden love story." —Mackenzi Lee, New York Times bestselling author of The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue
This information about The Phoenix Bride was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Natasha Siegel is the author of Solomon's Crown, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. She was born and raised in London, where she grew up in a Danish-Jewish family surrounded by stories. Her poetry has won accolades from the University of Oxford.
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