Ivy ***

Hearn, Julie. Ivy. 2008.

This story takes place in London in the early 1800s. Ivy's family is poor and makes it's living in dishonest ways. When she is little, she is taken away from her family by Carroty Kate, a woman who comes from a gang of criminals worse than her own family. They use her to help them rob people, particularly other children. When Kate dies, Ivy ends up back with her family again. Ivy ends up as an artists model for a rich artist but his mother hates her immediately and does everything she can to be rid if her. Ivy has a problem with laudanum, which is a liquid that was put into water and would put a person to sleep. It's a drug that could easily kill a person if taken improperly.

There were aspects of the story that didn't make sense to me, which I won't write about here because I don't want to give away anything about the plot or characters. Certain things that were in the book didn't add to the story at all and left me wondering why they were in there at all. This book won't disappoint fans of historical fiction, but other readers might not find much to like about it.