Once Upon a Bibliophile

BOOK- The Rose Bargain

AUTHOR- Sasha Peyton Smith

GENRE- alternate history, romance, fantasy, faeries

RATING- 3.5/5

I can’t remember the last time a book left me this breathless. I also can’t remember the last time a book left me this confused.

Me and the Rose Bargain have a very love-hate relationship. At times, I adored it. Looking back, I might despise it.

PLOT

England, 1848.

Lady Ivy Benton’s family is ruined and her Season over before it has even begun. But when the immortal Queen Moryen announces a competition to win the hand of her fae son, Prince Bram, Ivy sees a chance to save herself- and her sister- from last Season’s scandal. If she succeeds, she will be Queen. If she fails, her family will be stripped of their titles and wealth. What has she got to lose?

Yet every glittering fae deal has a rotting heart. And amidst the lavish balls, vicious competitions and a dangerous alliance with Prince Bram’s irresistible brother, Prince Emmet, Ivy soon realises that at the center of this contest lies a dark plot that could destroy all of England- and her heart along with it.

I was utterly captivated by this plot. I adored the dark, gaslamp fantasy elements, the backstabbing society girls, and the vicious faerie queen.

I’d expected The Rose Bargain to be more romantic, light, whimsical. I wasn’t expecting it to keep me up at night. I was desperate for more, and the plot twists just fueled that.

However.

The actual writing? Less than perfect. It was overly simple, and I found it too babyish. I understand that The Rose Bargain is a book intended for young adult, so obviously it isn’t going to be some kind of Dickens. But it does have a 14+ age rating. Well, people, I am 14, and I found it very juvenile. I hate to think what older readers would think of it.

To be fair to Sasha, the content was far from childish – it was the perfect mix of romance and darkness, blood and lies, faeries and high society. But I don’t want to be treated like a kid. I want to be treated like a young adult reader who can handle an author putting some effort into their writing.

Speaking of putting effort into writing…

One thing I hated about The Rose Bargain was the multiple POVs. And it doesn’t even deserve to be called that. Ivy was the main protagonist, but for some reason, Sasha decided it would be a good idea to randomly present us with the POV of a side character that no one cares about. I don’t need to know about whatever-her-name-was’s clandestine romance with the stable boy.

Adding these POVs felt lazy. I don’t know what Sasha’s justifications would be, but to me, it just highlights the flaws in her writing. One of the first things I learnt when I got into creative writing and poetry is to show, not tell. This means to let readers infer information by themselves, rather than simply saying something like ‘she was scared’. Often you don’t even notice it, because it is a fundamental part of writing a novel, and even more important to keeping your readers interested and compelled to read more.

Sasha’s writing wasn’t quite on the level of a primary school short story, but it did feel like she was ‘telling’ us too much through these side-character-POVs. None of the POVs revealed anything that couldn’t have been ‘shown’ through Ivy’s eyes.

As a reader, this was patronizing. Again, the author was over-simplifying things that weren’t even that complicated, and treating her readers like children. It was infuriating, at best.

There’s just no way I can fully enjoy a novel if I’m being spoon-fed. I want to be engaged in the story, feel part of the events. The characters aren’t going to have a running commentary, so why should we?

But.

Despite this, I found it very hard to put The Rose Bargain down. Discounting the side-character-POV- moments, the plot was perfectly paced. There wasn’t a lot of time spent on character development, which could have been a mistake, if there were complex characters to develop. Instead, the story attempted to draw readers in by being action packed and fast-moving. And I’m happy to say that it did succeed in this. Sasha managed to include a surprising amount of action for only three hundred and seventy-something pages.

The Rose Bargain completely stole my breath away. I found myself rooting for Ivy not because I liked her but simply because she was the main character. I didn’t have time to consider things like depth and well, all the things I’m on the lookout for. I got swept away in the story, and it’s actually the first time in quite a while that I didn’t stop and think- I just read.

OK. Prepare yourselves. We’re going to talk love triangle now.

The last time I was promised a love triangle and didn’t get one was The Princess Knight by Cait Jacobs. Thankfully, the love-non-triangle ( I tried to work out what shape it would be but I ended up with a big mess) in The Rose Bargain actually…worked? It worked to make a good story, even if it didn’t work as a love triangle.

Like with the action-packed plot, having so many people all in love with each other diverted my focus from the individual relationships. I just went ‘ok, I guess so-and-so is in love with so-and-so’ and didn’t question anything about it.

For once, confusion worked in the author’s favour. If I hadn’t needed to look back on The Rose Bargain in more detail, I wouldn’t have noticed how shallow some of the relationships were- but more on that later.

The more triangular part of the Love Mess was between Ivy, Bram and Emmet. And I adored it. I mean, she’s in love with one brother, but has to marry the other? Yes! And the tropes! I think Sasha really came into her own when writing the romance. Only one bed, enemies to lovers, fake dating… it had it all.

Ok, so maybe some or maybe most or maybe all of the characters involved annoyed me, but the swoon!!!!!!! The secrecy! The lies! The heartbreak…

And so, as you can see, there are goods and there are bads about the plot of The Rose Bargain, and neither side overshadows the other.

CHARACTERS

Like with the plot, I don’t really know what to feel about the characters in The Rose Bargain. They weren’t bad…

I’m not going to do individual character reviews like I normally do, because I’ll be saying the same things about every single one.

I found the characters in The Rose Bargain…shallow, but at the same time, not in need of any more depth. Like I said earlier, the plot of The Rose Bargain was its main selling point, and the focus was put a lot more on action and drama than things like character and relationship development. But, like with the Love Mess (I’m going to be using that phrase a lot more in the future) it did actually work.

There was no need to give the characters too much depth, because, well…we weren’t there for the characters. It worked in Sasha’s favour that the main selling point of the novel was the action, not the people. I’m pretty sure I would have rooted for any character who was a main POV, simply because they were there.

But…

The relationships between characters feel a little flat because of this. There was just something missing. I felt like there was potential for the author to build something bigger, get more internal conflict going, just bring…more.

And it was pretty much like this across the board. Every character was a little shallow, a little flat, but because not a lot of attention was given to them, it didn’t stand out as major, major issue.

I did quite like Ivy. Bram was cute, Emment made me swoon and want to punch him at the same time and the side characters were kind of funny at times. I got the sense that I was feeling all the things I ought to feel about them. It’s just that none of them found a place in my heart.

CONCLUSION

The Rose Bargain had me very confused. The plot was both brilliant and disappointing, all rolled into one. The writing style was simple and lacking technique, the characters shallow and the relationships even more so. But, despite my brain normally being on high alert for such things, for once, I stopped thinking and got swept away in the action. The Rose Bargain was deliciously dark and amazingly romantic, and, most of all, I was excited by the plot.

Reading this book may not have been the best experience, but it did remind me to forget about technique and reviews and just read the book. I’m definitely going to be doing more of that in the future.

I’m not sure if I’ll write a sequel review- I’m not even sure if I’ll even read The Thorn Queen- but stay tuned just in case, and remember to subscribe to get email updates whenever I publish a post.

Until we meet again…