Rose Queen Trilogy Books in Order

The Rose Queen trilogy follows one heroine, Cadi Hughes, from a tight‑knit Welsh mining community to wartime Liverpool and beyond. Across the three books you watch her fight for independence, love and a sense of belonging as the world around her is reshaped by conflict.

In The Rose Queen, it is 1938 and Cadi is thrilled to be chosen as Rose Queen in her village’s annual fete. For a single day she is dressed like royalty, but the honour only sharpens her longing to leave the pit village where her father and sweetheart Aled expect her to stay. When war is declared, Cadi and best friend Poppy seize their chance, heading for Liverpool with dreams of better jobs and wider horizons. City life is harder and poorer than they hoped, and work in a local pub brings Cadi into contact with rough customers and a handsome dock worker who rescues her from danger. When Aled arrives in RAF uniform, the life she left behind in Wales collides with the one she is building in Liverpool.

The Winter Rose picks up Cadi’s story in 1941. German bombing has destroyed much of what she has built in the city, but she is more determined than ever to "do her bit". Joining the WAAF keeps her close to Jez, the man she loves, even as the war sends him far away to North Africa. Rumours spread by someone from her past threaten both their relationship and Cadi’s place among her new friends. With snow on the ground and Christmas approaching, she is forced to make decisions that could either save or ruin her hopes for the future.

In A Rose and a Promise, the war has moved into its later stages. Cadi and Jez are posted miles apart, clinging to letters and brief reunions until a devastating call from his base changes everything. At his bedside they make a promise she prays she will never have to keep. Back in Liverpool, Cadi leans on the network of friends and found family she has made, navigating grief, duty and unexpected opportunities as peace slowly comes into view.

Taken together, the trilogy offers a classic Katie Flynn blend of working‑class grit, strong female friendship and tender, sometimes difficult romance. The tone is emotional without being sentimental, with plenty of period detail—queues, uniforms, billets, railway journeys and the small luxuries that mean the world when supplies are short.

While each book revisits familiar characters, the focus is always on Cadi’s growth from hesitant village girl to woman who knows her own mind. Reading the series in order—from The Rose Queen to The Winter Rose and then A Rose and a Promise—lets you see how each choice she makes, right or wrong, shapes the next stage of her life.