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silenttwg's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
When Rose awakens in a green house with no memory of how she got there, the adventure begins. This story explores her torture, among being experimented on, watching as the world she once knew and can only remember in fragmented pieces is stripped from her, all while dealing with a bizarre transformation.
This made me think of Poison Ivy, the character, someone who's innocence and naivety is stripped away by cruelty and I wanted her to rise up and be powerful one. But as her will is subjected to horrendous punishment and you see just how much she's beaten down, you realize that option grows slimmer and slimmer.
I loved that she is always fighting for survival, refusing to just give in, and this is why the ending actually really disappointed me. Sure, that could have been her choice but I would have loved to see her take what occurred and use it to become something more. She became something almost divine with protective and offensive powers, she could have gone through and saved more victims like herself from their inescapable prisons. It just was disappointing to me.
I'm glad I snagged this cause it is beautiful and the story's enjoyable.
This made me think of Poison Ivy, the character, someone who's innocence and naivety is stripped away by cruelty and I wanted her to rise up and be powerful one. But as her will is subjected to horrendous punishment and you see just how much she's beaten down, you realize that option grows slimmer and slimmer.
I loved that she is always fighting for survival, refusing to just give in, and this is why the ending actually really disappointed me. Sure, that could have been her choice but I would have loved to see her take what occurred and use it to become something more. She became something almost divine with protective and offensive powers, she could have gone through and saved more victims like herself from their inescapable prisons. It just was disappointing to me.
I'm glad I snagged this cause it is beautiful and the story's enjoyable.
missbritt08's review against another edition
I really wanted to like this book. The premise was interesting. I did not enjoy the writing style. I found París to be completely unlikeable (I realize that was the point but he had zero redeeming qualities.) The way he spoke was very cringe for me. And then the over done trope of a woman being naive and completely missing all the red flags waving in her face.
I know I’m in the minority. So please don’t let that stop you. It just wasn’t for me.
I know I’m in the minority. So please don’t let that stop you. It just wasn’t for me.
radicalrachelreads's review against another edition
5.0
I have a fascination with people turning into plants - weird, I know - so when I got the opportunity to listen to this audiobook I was excited. The author wastes no one time diving right into the story but we soon find out, even though things are odd, they are going to keep getting even more strange! This is a dark fantasy horror with a fairy tale feel that I think most young adults could handle reading.
*Spoilers ahead*
From serious incel vibes - Paris steams with them - to stalking, murder, magic, abuse, and folklore monsters - this book is jam packed with exciting stuff, stuff that makes you cringe, and stuff that makes you think! Ladies, always trust your gut! The horror is a combo of body horror and psychological horror as well as a study of captivity and confinement. I was left wondering if Paris had really endured the horrible things he detailed or if he made them up to suit his twisted fantasies. I’m going with the latter. He’s an incel psychopath whose childhood clearly had an impact on him but how much was nature and how much was nurture?
As things were drawing to a close I was trying to guess how it was all going to end. I was hoping for a pretty ending...a happy fantasy ending. The actual ending left me wanting a different outcome but knowing that how it ended fit so well with the rest of the story.
I noticed some other reviews mentioned editing errors but I’m assuming because I listened rather than read that they were fixed in the process of the audiobook creation. I heard nothing amiss.
This was the first audiobook I’ve listened to that was narrated by a woman and I loved her style. Great narrator choice.
Thank you to the always pleasant Rami Ungar for an audiobook in return for an honest review.
*Spoilers ahead*
From serious incel vibes - Paris steams with them - to stalking, murder, magic, abuse, and folklore monsters - this book is jam packed with exciting stuff, stuff that makes you cringe, and stuff that makes you think! Ladies, always trust your gut! The horror is a combo of body horror and psychological horror as well as a study of captivity and confinement. I was left wondering if Paris had really endured the horrible things he detailed or if he made them up to suit his twisted fantasies. I’m going with the latter. He’s an incel psychopath whose childhood clearly had an impact on him but how much was nature and how much was nurture?
As things were drawing to a close I was trying to guess how it was all going to end. I was hoping for a pretty ending...a happy fantasy ending. The actual ending left me wanting a different outcome but knowing that how it ended fit so well with the rest of the story.
I noticed some other reviews mentioned editing errors but I’m assuming because I listened rather than read that they were fixed in the process of the audiobook creation. I heard nothing amiss.
This was the first audiobook I’ve listened to that was narrated by a woman and I loved her style. Great narrator choice.
Thank you to the always pleasant Rami Ungar for an audiobook in return for an honest review.
stephbookshine's review against another edition
4.0
*I received a free copy of this book with thanks to the author and to Isobel Blackthorn of Blackthorn Book Tours. The decision to review and my opinions are my own.*
Don’t let the beautiful, delicate cover fool you – this is out-and-out horror!
It’s hardly worth bothering with trigger warnings, as you can pretty much assume “all of them” covers it. For a short sample, we have – rape and molestation, violence against animals, violence against women (sexual, physical, coercion, financial, emotional… you name it), torture… you get the idea!
The story begins with Rose waking up without her memories and immediately undergoing a painful and terrifying transformation. Luckily for her, the lovely Paris appears to soothe and console her, and restrain her and hurt her… because he loves her, you see. So isn’t it also super lucky that he has access to some very powerful, dark magic, to help him punish those who oppose him? Yeah, Rose is in trouble.
In fact, although there are some very grisly physical and magical acts that occur during the course of this story, it is the psychological horror that really chills your soul and haunts you long afterwards. I just can’t stop thinking about the story; about the depths that human beings can go to to inflict pain for their own pleasure, and the lengths they will go to justify their actions to themselves. The real monsters aren’t always the ones with green skin or tentacles.
Rose is a chilling fantasy horror story for this spooky season and will stay with you long after the bonfires are done.
Abruptly, the rose dies in my hand: the pink fleshy petals turn black and crinkly, while the stalk becomes brown and brittle. I drop the rose and stand, alarmed. On the workbench and on the ground, roses wilt and die before my very eyes. What the hell?
As the flowers die, my eyes light on something lying at the foot of the workbench that’s not a rose. I lean forward to take a closer look, only to jump back in horror.
– Rami Ungar, Rose
Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog
https://bookshineandreadbows.wordpress.com/2019/10/12/blog-tour-rose-rami-ungar/
Don’t let the beautiful, delicate cover fool you – this is out-and-out horror!
It’s hardly worth bothering with trigger warnings, as you can pretty much assume “all of them” covers it. For a short sample, we have – rape and molestation, violence against animals, violence against women (sexual, physical, coercion, financial, emotional… you name it), torture… you get the idea!
The story begins with Rose waking up without her memories and immediately undergoing a painful and terrifying transformation. Luckily for her, the lovely Paris appears to soothe and console her, and restrain her and hurt her… because he loves her, you see. So isn’t it also super lucky that he has access to some very powerful, dark magic, to help him punish those who oppose him? Yeah, Rose is in trouble.
In fact, although there are some very grisly physical and magical acts that occur during the course of this story, it is the psychological horror that really chills your soul and haunts you long afterwards. I just can’t stop thinking about the story; about the depths that human beings can go to to inflict pain for their own pleasure, and the lengths they will go to justify their actions to themselves. The real monsters aren’t always the ones with green skin or tentacles.
Rose is a chilling fantasy horror story for this spooky season and will stay with you long after the bonfires are done.
Abruptly, the rose dies in my hand: the pink fleshy petals turn black and crinkly, while the stalk becomes brown and brittle. I drop the rose and stand, alarmed. On the workbench and on the ground, roses wilt and die before my very eyes. What the hell?
As the flowers die, my eyes light on something lying at the foot of the workbench that’s not a rose. I lean forward to take a closer look, only to jump back in horror.
– Rami Ungar, Rose
Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog
https://bookshineandreadbows.wordpress.com/2019/10/12/blog-tour-rose-rami-ungar/
unwrappingwords's review against another edition
4.0
Waking in a greenhouse with no memories from the last few years isn’t the strangest thing to happen to Rose. She also discovers her skin has turned green, buds have sprouted, and roots now reach from her body. A mysterious young man introduces himself as her boyfriend, Paris, and Rose has no choice but to trust him.
It takes a skilled author to make a single setting interesting and terrifying, and Ungar does it successfully here, with most of the novel set in Paris’ apartment, as Rose comes to terms with her new form, and faces the results of the dark magic used to transform her. The tension levels remain high, each scene building upon the last, keeping the reader completely – no pun intended – rooted to Rose’s story, engaged throughout.
The only slight downfall was the ending, feeling like it went on maybe a little too long, but the novel is no less enjoyable for that. A frightening, high-tension read, one I would definitely recommend to any horror fantasy fans.
It takes a skilled author to make a single setting interesting and terrifying, and Ungar does it successfully here, with most of the novel set in Paris’ apartment, as Rose comes to terms with her new form, and faces the results of the dark magic used to transform her. The tension levels remain high, each scene building upon the last, keeping the reader completely – no pun intended – rooted to Rose’s story, engaged throughout.
The only slight downfall was the ending, feeling like it went on maybe a little too long, but the novel is no less enjoyable for that. A frightening, high-tension read, one I would definitely recommend to any horror fantasy fans.
powerlibrarian's review against another edition
3.0
Synopsis
When Rose awakens in a greenhouse with no memory of how she got there, she’s horrified to discover that her body has transformed. Her memories are a jumble, and she encounters a strange man named Paris who claims to be the love of her life. She doesn’t remember him at all. He says that he saved her life using magic he found in an ancient tome, and that her bodily transformation is an unfortunate side effect. But there's a sinister side to Paris that scares her and makes her question everything he's told her…
Plot
The story gripped me from its very first lines. Ungar keeps the pages turning with a fast-paced plot. The novel itself is only 208 pages, and he fits quite a bit of action among its pages. The story is intense and dark and fit for any fan of the horror genre.
The transformations that Rose undergoes are truly unique, and Ungar has created a new horror monster that isn’t quite like the rest. He establishes limitations for her that make the story more interesting, as we discover that Rose cannot simply escape from Paris’ home.
While compelling, there are some aspects to the story that require a suspension of disbelief, and those have nothing to do with the magic. For example, what are the odds that both Rose and Paris speak Dutch? There are also a few inconsistencies in the plot. Rose’s parents are uneducated, yet one of them is a librarian? Ahem. I’m going to let that one slide, but just FYI, you need at least one master’s degree to be a librarian. Rose is Paris’ sociology “teacher”, but I couldn’t quite tell if that meant she was his professor or teaching assistant. These little inconsistencies are nitpicking, and while they did confuse me somewhat while reading the story, they didn’t affect my enjoyment of it.
Characters
Rose is categorized as a horror, and while there’s some body horror in her transformations, the real horror lies in what a human would do with seemingly infinite power. Paris’ transformation may not be a physical one, but it is the most terrifying part of this story. Paris is a fascinating character with a horrifying past that has distorted him into the man he is today.
As mentioned earlier, Rose has lost her memories. Part of the fact that she has lost her memories means that she could be any one of us. There aren’t any obvious aspects of her past that distinguish her from any other woman reading the book, and that relatability adds a personal touch to the horror. Ungar manages to develop her personality well without having the crutch of many flashbacks to draw on. She questions her sanity more than once which, again, adds another level of horror to the novel. As the story progresses, she regains some of her memories, and this enables Ungar to flesh her out into an even more compelling character.
There are other characters in the story, but they aren’t as well developed, which is the nature of such a short, plot-driven book. Had Ungar decided to make the novel longer, I would have liked to have seen more of these characters on the pages.
I recommend this book to those looking for a psychological thriller with a body horror twist.
*Thank you to the Blackthorn Book Tours for the ebook for review*
This review appeared first on https://powerlibrarian.wordpress.com/
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sarah984's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
I had decent hopes going into this but unfortunately in the end the book just wasn't very good. The main character has a fun voice and I was hoping for something a bit like Transmuted where she learns to use her new body to overcome her situation, but the story just drags on and the character never winds up having much agency. A lot of characters and concepts are introduced near the end that don't really wind up meaning anything. The incel concept with the antagonist could have been something but instead felt pointless and some of the detail seemed gratuitous. There were a lot of little errors (characters’ names spelled differently in different places) and typos. The ending was stupid.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Cultural appropriation, and Gaslighting
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Blood, Death of parent, Gore, Grief, Kidnapping, Medical content, Misogyny, Murder, Stalking, Torture, Injury/Injury detail, Pedophilia, Animal death, Bullying, Death, Excrement, Fire/Fire injury, Physical abuse, and Violence
Minor: Suicidal thoughts and Rape
angelamisri's review
5.0
Rose is one of those characters (like Carrie in Stephen King's book) who pulls you into the story, wrapping herself around you, making it impossible to stop reading.
tattooedbibliophile's review
4.0
“I’m not that kind of god.”
Don’t let that fantastically beautiful cover fool you. This is a horror novel. Of the terrifying variety.
You see, Rose wakes up in a greenhouse. As a flower. A giant human flower. And the man who turned her into one to save her life is, of course, not who he claims to be.
Most horror novels are very tropey and predictable. Not. This. One. Holy plot twist. Now, I’ll admit, Paris doesn’t seem right from the start. That part is predictable. But don’t expect what happens next, because you’ll be surprised as hell!
It seems strange at first that Rose isn’t more thrown off by the fact that she’s bloody freaking green. But soon she has MUCH bigger problems. In the form of an abusive boyfriend. Psycho, to be more exact. So if that kind of thing bothers you too much to read, INSERT TRIGGER WARNING HERE. I am not personally triggered by this, but it was terrifying for me to read.
This is the kind of book that you yell at, like a movie, “NO, don’t run up the stairs, run out the door!“ Rose isn’t a dumb blonde (actually she’s a pretty smart hot pink,) but there were times in the book that I was squirming around in my chair in suspense.
4/5, this one gave me nightmares!
Don’t let that fantastically beautiful cover fool you. This is a horror novel. Of the terrifying variety.
You see, Rose wakes up in a greenhouse. As a flower. A giant human flower. And the man who turned her into one to save her life is, of course, not who he claims to be.
Most horror novels are very tropey and predictable. Not. This. One. Holy plot twist. Now, I’ll admit, Paris doesn’t seem right from the start. That part is predictable. But don’t expect what happens next, because you’ll be surprised as hell!
It seems strange at first that Rose isn’t more thrown off by the fact that she’s bloody freaking green. But soon she has MUCH bigger problems. In the form of an abusive boyfriend. Psycho, to be more exact. So if that kind of thing bothers you too much to read, INSERT TRIGGER WARNING HERE. I am not personally triggered by this, but it was terrifying for me to read.
This is the kind of book that you yell at, like a movie, “NO, don’t run up the stairs, run out the door!“ Rose isn’t a dumb blonde (actually she’s a pretty smart hot pink,) but there were times in the book that I was squirming around in my chair in suspense.
4/5, this one gave me nightmares!
stephbookshine's review against another edition
4.0
*I received a free copy of this book with thanks to the author and to Isobel Blackthorn of Blackthorn Book Tours. The decision to review and my opinions are my own.*
Don’t let the beautiful, delicate cover fool you – this is out-and-out horror!
It’s hardly worth bothering with trigger warnings, as you can pretty much assume “all of them” covers it. For a short sample, we have – rape and molestation, violence against animals, violence against women (sexual, physical, coercion, financial, emotional… you name it), torture… you get the idea!
The story begins with Rose waking up without her memories and immediately undergoing a painful and terrifying transformation. Luckily for her, the lovely Paris appears to soothe and console her, and restrain her and hurt her… because he loves her, you see. So isn’t it also super lucky that he has access to some very powerful, dark magic, to help him punish those who oppose him? Yeah, Rose is in trouble.
In fact, although there are some very grisly physical and magical acts that occur during the course of this story, it is the psychological horror that really chills your soul and haunts you long afterwards. I just can’t stop thinking about the story; about the depths that human beings can go to to inflict pain for their own pleasure, and the lengths they will go to justify their actions to themselves. The real monsters aren’t always the ones with green skin or tentacles.
Rose is a chilling fantasy horror story for this spooky season and will stay with you long after the bonfires are done.
Abruptly, the rose dies in my hand: the pink fleshy petals turn black and crinkly, while the stalk becomes brown and brittle. I drop the rose and stand, alarmed. On the workbench and on the ground, roses wilt and die before my very eyes. What the hell?
As the flowers die, my eyes light on something lying at the foot of the workbench that’s not a rose. I lean forward to take a closer look, only to jump back in horror.
– Rami Ungar, Rose
Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog
https://bookshineandreadbows.wordpress.com/2019/10/12/blog-tour-rose-rami-ungar/
Don’t let the beautiful, delicate cover fool you – this is out-and-out horror!
It’s hardly worth bothering with trigger warnings, as you can pretty much assume “all of them” covers it. For a short sample, we have – rape and molestation, violence against animals, violence against women (sexual, physical, coercion, financial, emotional… you name it), torture… you get the idea!
The story begins with Rose waking up without her memories and immediately undergoing a painful and terrifying transformation. Luckily for her, the lovely Paris appears to soothe and console her, and restrain her and hurt her… because he loves her, you see. So isn’t it also super lucky that he has access to some very powerful, dark magic, to help him punish those who oppose him? Yeah, Rose is in trouble.
In fact, although there are some very grisly physical and magical acts that occur during the course of this story, it is the psychological horror that really chills your soul and haunts you long afterwards. I just can’t stop thinking about the story; about the depths that human beings can go to to inflict pain for their own pleasure, and the lengths they will go to justify their actions to themselves. The real monsters aren’t always the ones with green skin or tentacles.
Rose is a chilling fantasy horror story for this spooky season and will stay with you long after the bonfires are done.
Abruptly, the rose dies in my hand: the pink fleshy petals turn black and crinkly, while the stalk becomes brown and brittle. I drop the rose and stand, alarmed. On the workbench and on the ground, roses wilt and die before my very eyes. What the hell?
As the flowers die, my eyes light on something lying at the foot of the workbench that’s not a rose. I lean forward to take a closer look, only to jump back in horror.
– Rami Ungar, Rose
Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog
https://bookshineandreadbows.wordpress.com/2019/10/12/blog-tour-rose-rami-ungar/