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A review by psychotherabee
The Everlasting Rose by Dhonielle Clayton
3.0
This review can also be found here.
I was disappointed to have to give this three stars after how much I loved The Belles. It must be noted the author did have health problems during the time she was writing this book, so she must be commended for producing what is effectively still a good YA fantasy book.
I still love Camellia as much as I did in the first book. I still love the matriarchy and the relationships formed along the way in this novel. The magic, the world-building — this book still has everything I enjoyed about the prequel.
What I didn’t like was that feeling where you don’t know where something is going. I didn’t understand what was going to happen for most of the book, and when it happened, it seemed pointless and disappointing. It felt as though the characters were going on a journey for the sake of having something to do, and honestly you could read the beginning and skip to the end and everything would make sense.
There was plenty of drama — Clayton is very good at building this up. The stress was real reading this novel. But the character deaths seemed very pointless, and it was disappointing how some characters never got redemption. The ending felt quite quick as well, although I was still pleased by it. It’s tough to follow up such a great first novel, The Everlasting Rose certainly tries to do that, but just falls short.
I was disappointed to have to give this three stars after how much I loved The Belles. It must be noted the author did have health problems during the time she was writing this book, so she must be commended for producing what is effectively still a good YA fantasy book.
I still love Camellia as much as I did in the first book. I still love the matriarchy and the relationships formed along the way in this novel. The magic, the world-building — this book still has everything I enjoyed about the prequel.
What I didn’t like was that feeling where you don’t know where something is going. I didn’t understand what was going to happen for most of the book, and when it happened, it seemed pointless and disappointing. It felt as though the characters were going on a journey for the sake of having something to do, and honestly you could read the beginning and skip to the end and everything would make sense.
There was plenty of drama — Clayton is very good at building this up. The stress was real reading this novel. But the character deaths seemed very pointless, and it was disappointing how some characters never got redemption. The ending felt quite quick as well, although I was still pleased by it. It’s tough to follow up such a great first novel, The Everlasting Rose certainly tries to do that, but just falls short.