Just when you were sure Romeo and Juliet died tragic deaths because of love, here comes their daughter Rosaline Montague to straighten out the story in A Fair Daughter of Verona by Christina Dodd. It seems that love and marriage permeate their daughter’s life as well, once she gets the story straight that they did not die as it appeared. The book keeps the time period and customs of Shakespeare’s original story intact, adding the personalities of the adult Romeo and Juliet who are now of parenting and community involvement age. As might be expected, they are prominent members of their community as their daughter tells the corrected rest of the story.
At twenty, Rosaline is happily single and long past marriageable age. She keeps deliberately matchmaking her own selected betrothals with other brides more suitable for them. Finally, she is matched to a suitor whose first three wives have died under mysterious circumstances. Her conscience won’t let her palm him off on another bride who will undoubtedly also die. Not only is he murdered before the wedding can take place, but several other people are mysteriously killed.
As one might guess, Rosaline does not long remain bonded to being single so her own romance becomes part of the story. The mixture of romance, murder mystery solutions, and good fun with the seven boisterous children of Romeo and Juliet make for pleasurable reading that is much lighter than Shakespeare’s original. I enjoyed reading the book, that comes out today, in an ARC from Net Galley.