Reviews - Rose in Chains | The StoryGraph

3.69k reviews for:

Rose in Chains

Julie Soto

4.18 AVERAGE

allegedham's review against another edition

4.0

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

inekar's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

cyndi_y's review against another edition

5.0

slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Best book I read this year! I was captivated throughout and spent way too many late nights reading when I should have been sleeping. The plot kept me guessing the whole time, and I still am not sure what to make of some parts.
Briony (FMC) is strong, stubborn, and smart, although she may not fully grasp some of the finer emotional and romantic nuances; however, that is not our main focus in this book. She is the princess of the kingdom that is overthrown and is sold off at auction to become someone's magic source for their heart magic. Enter Toven (MMC), who is all kinds of dark and mysterious, and I am here for it! He purchases Briony at auction, and we do not know why or what his plan is for her (we never really learn this, but we can guess). The romance side of this book is the longest slow burn I have read in a while. Every time I felt like something would happen, something or someone would interrupt. Although I want the romance and can't wait to see where book 2 will take it, I was way more interested in everything with the war and the secrets that began to slowly be found out.

There are some triggers in this book, so I would advise anyone to review the warnings before beginning.

meruko's review against another edition

1.75

dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

A rough 1.75*.
I'm not sure what to say or think of this book. 75% of it was so fanfic coded with ALL the fanfic tropes thrown into it, including the very extreme "all villain characters are vile and vulvar to the max so you know for sure they are not good people". It's pushing the villain level to the max with every. Single. Antagonist. Character. None of them are able to say three sentences without resorting to vulgar words. None of them. Characters are either male and vile and vulgar (+ one female character, the "ultimate vilain" of the story), with a few exceptions very lightly sprinkled through the story (mainly low importance secondary or absent male characters), including of course the romantic interest, or they are female (and therefore good and all underdogs).
The book is so choke full of r*pe, ab*se, extreme power dynamics, dr*gs and tra*ma that it still reads like a rebellious teenager just discovered fanfiction and decided to experiment with all the tropes, all at once, just for the sake of making a "good heroine endures all the bad things in the world" type of story.
I am aware that it is a fanfic taken down and rewritten for trad publishing, but the author only focused on rewriting the world (due to obvious copyright issues) and nothing was done to make it less "hormal teenager is throwing everything at a wall to see what sticks".
The last few lines were epic. The rest... Oof.
I might decide to pick up the next book because I still kinda liked the ending (once the author was done throwing everything in and actually seemed to be finding their story), but I'm definitiely not recommending the book unless you are still in your fanfic phase...