isitcake 's review for:

A Ruin of Roses by K.F. Breene

2.5

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This felt very YA but I weirdly liked this book. I don't plan on picking up the next in the series anytime soon since I've heard it starts turning into nonstop orgies and its just a bit too YA cringe. I also was somewhat spoiled that

she turns out to be a dragon shifter just like Prince Nyfain.

This has a decent attempt at world building even if it doesn't make sense. There are kingdoms of animal shifters and I guess they're all ok except a demon took over this dragon kingdom?? Now there's a curse across their land and like Beauty and the Beast the castle is frozen in time and there's a rosebush that is slowly dying. The characters all act YA and there's the typical FMC who "isn't like all the other girls" and yet drop dead gorgeous lol. The best of this book is  Hadriel. He's hilarious in a Rick and Morty kind of way. I can picture him going "oh jeez."

Sooo the plot is

Nyfain is the dragon shifter prince. His dad is the one who made a deal with demons and I guess he's dead and we think the mom is too but its easy to see from the later books that she's secretly alive. The curse makes everyone eventually get sick and die except in the castle it freezes their ages and they can't leave the castle grounds. The demons are all incubi/succubi and they influence the castle servants to make them all have nightly perverted sex orgies as well as sometimes they'll go into the villages and get with the peasants. Nyfain though has resisted, being celibate for 16 years now. He first encountered Finley when she was 14 stealing everlass plant from the Forbidden Wood. He views his duty now to kill all the cursed monsters that inhabit the woods. Now 16 years later Finley's dad is dying and she needs more everlass so she steals more but encounters the beast again (oh Nyfain=the beast. Ever since the demons came the curse also prevents people from shifting except he's an alpha shifter and he forced it but doing so shorn off his wings, turned his scales black and eyes gold). Nyfain takes her to his castle tower for stealing but lets her wander around, tasking his butler Hadriel to watch over her. She reveals all her plant knowledge, she can make elixirs for healing and resisting the demon's powers and postponing the curse sickness, which amazes Nyfain because this is super secret dragon royalty knowledge. He's constantly testing her thinking she somehow is nefarious. She tries to run away at one point and he saves her but gets poisoned by the creatures in the woods. She realizes that everlass grown a certain way, "crowded," is normally a poison but for someone poisoned its a cure. She uses it on Nyfain and cures him but he  sleep drugs her and her family (Hannon her doctorish older brother, Jade, and younger sister Sable) and goes back to the castle I guess to take on the woods or demons alone. The book ends with Finley preparing to go after him.

So it's a decent plot and I'm assuming in later books we learn more about the dying rosebush growing in the queen's old chambers and what exactly went down with the old king, and somehow they'll out the demons. But there are 6 books in the series as I type this and ehhhh idk if this is that good to keep reading.