The Rose Society by Marie Lu

 

  Once upon a time, a girl had a father, a prince, a society of friends. Then they betrayed her, and she destroyed them all.

Adelina Amouteru’s heart has suffered at the hands of both family and friends, turning her down the bitter path of revenge. Now known and feared as the White Wolf, she flees Kenettra with her sister to find other Young Elites in the hopes of building her own army of allies. Her goal: to strike down the Inquisition Axis, the white-cloaked soldiers who nearly killed her.

But Adelina is no heroine. Her powers, fed only by fear and hate, have started to grow beyond her control. She does not trust her newfound Elite friends. Teren Santoro, leader of the Inquisition, wants her dead. And her former friends, Raffaele and the Dagger Society, want to stop her thirst for vengeance. Adelina struggles to cling to the good within her. But how can someone be good when her very existence depends on darkness?

Bestselling author Marie Lu delivers another heart-pounding adventure in this exhilarating sequel to The Young Elites.

Synopsis and picture credit to goodreads.com

This book is so different from every young adult book I have ever read. The Rose Society is an extremely dark novel, told from the perspective of Adelina, who is basically a villain. If you like happy books with sweet romance, this book is definitely not for you. Your heart will slowly be breaking, but the alluring story will continue to draw you in, sadly leaving your heart broken by the time you finish this book.

I love Marie Lu's writing style, because it is easy to understand, yet she can easily wind a complex story. Lu's writing style is hypnotic. She combines short and long sentences nicely, giving the story almost a poetic feel. I love how she described emotions and the scenery in a very clear way, making it easier for the reader to become engulfed in the story.

Now, the characters. I feel there's very few likable characters. All the characters have their own hidden, mostly corrupt motives, making it hard to like any of the characters, who appear frequently through out the story. Maeve has good motives, but since the story is being told from Adelina's perspective, she is the enemy and we are supposed to be rooting against her. But the corrupt nature and conflicting interests of the characters make them feel more realistic and developed, seeing that no real person is completely good and sparkly. I have mixed feelings about Adelina as a main character.

Adelina's dark personality makes it difficult for the reader to root for her, because, well, she likes pain and killing people. Through out the novel, Adelina's hatred towards those betray her fester inside of her, turning the poor girl more evil. I often felt the need to slap some sense in to her and remind her that the killing of the people is kinda bad, no? She seemed more sadistic than in the last book, which is understandable.

There was some romance in this book, not a whole lot, but some. I don't want to say who love the love interest is, because it would spoil the book in more ways than one, but I will say that the romance, to me, seemed a little all of sudden and not 100% necessary.

  I recommend this book for people who are looking for something different to read. The Rose Society is the second book of the Young Elites and it contains the same dark themes found in the first book. In my opinion, I would find that this book would be more enjoyable if one re-read the first book as a refresher, before reading the second book. There are quite a few characters and it is hard to keep track of who exactly they are, without having read the first book recently. Something tells me that this book will not end happily, but I think the most satisfying ending to me would be if Adelina died at the hands of someone she wronged. (Just speculating) I think it would be a very fitting ending to a dark story and eventually the consequences of all of her evil actions needs to catch up with her.

Overall, I would give this book a 9 out of 10. Have a good day and I hope you enjoyed this review!

- Kalee

Camp NaNoWriMo

 

JC: Hello, you beautiful human beings :) Soo, this isn’t a review or anything, it’s more like . . . an advertisement? A suggestion? A plea for help? Something like that.

Kalee: JC and I have decided to check out Camp NaNoWriMo even though we have no idea what it is, but it sounded fun. Fun is good. Writing is good. Fun and writing together is great.

JC: Okay, to start off, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It’s held every November, and if I understand correctly,  writers can participate in it and try to reach the 50,000 word count goal by the end of the month. So they had that, and then they started this thing called Camp NaNoWriMo, which is available year-round (if I’m not totally confused), though they have the word count goal writing competition things (almost like NaNoWriMo) during the months of April and July? I don’t fully understand it, but I think you can make your own word count goals for any writing project you want to do and monitor your progress. And then there are cabins, which are the main reason for our post.

Kalee: You make me look lazy with all of your long paragraphs. Anyway, cabins are basically group chats, where writers can socialize and motivate one another. JC and I have a cabin, but we are basically just having an extended group chat there, haha.

JC: Not even a group chat, honestly. Because Kalee and I are the only ones in there. So. Onto the plea for help part. We pretty much joined Camp NaNoWriMo so that we could interact with other writers, talk about problems that arise while writing, inspiration, story stuff, etc.

Kalee: And books. And books. And books, JC.

JC: Right, okay. Except . . . we’re the only ones on our cabin, so it’s kind of hard to talk to other people. And we’re kind of getting sick of each other. Just kidding. Ish.

Kalee: I'm offended, JC. Tsk tsk.

JC: Yep, yep, sorry. Aaaaaanyway, basically, the purpose of this post is to a) inform you guys about Camp NaNoWriMo (if you didn’t already know about it), b) recommend it to you--right, well, we forgot to recommend it to you. Basically you should join because it’s a really great writing exercise (or so I’ve read). It helps to get your creative juices flowing, so to speak, because the word count goal (whether you stick with the 50,000 word count goal or not) kind of motivates you to just get your ideas down onto the paper, worrying less about grammar and eloquence and more about just writing. Also, you can have the opportunity to talk to other writers who have similar problems and maybe some answers to questions you may have. Finally, we wanted to c) ask you guys (and gals) if you wanted to be in our cabin. We think it would be really fun to be able to talk to you guys about writing, books, all that good stuff.

Kalee: In general, JC likes reading and writing contemporary and romance. And fantasy related  stuff, too. I like fantasy and science fiction mostly. We are both teenagers of the teenage age.

JC: We also like dystopia.

Kalee: That, too. My username is @Kay T.

JC: Aaaand my username is @ohmybears. If you decide to join (you really, really should) and want to be in a cabin with us (which would be fun) and will ACTIVELY PARTICIPATE in the discussions (just to make it even funner), comment your username below or email it to theeggheadreviews@gmail.com. We were thinking that it would be fun if teens join our cabin, but adults are cool, too. And if there are any infants out there, just surfing the World Wide Web, their tiny fingers poking at the keys--babies are cool, too.

Kalee: Thank you and we hope you'll join us.

JC: (Please join us) Okay, byeeeee! Ta-ta for now :) <3

Link: www.campnanowrimo.org

Update: We have cabin mates now! Yay! So we're not quite as desperate as we were, though we have some spots left and would still welcome you guys into our cabin :) Either way, we still think that Camp NaNoWriMo would be a great exercise/experience for aspiring writers, and it's a great place to meet others who have similar struggles/obstacles to your own. Okay, thanks! Bye again! :) <3