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A review by celsius273
Roseblood by A.G. Howard
2.0
I don't even know where to start with this one. It's actually like the most generic paranormal book you've ever read (you name the trope, it's like 99.87392% there) so there's that, but it was also oddly captivating because those tropes work so I'm super conflicted. On reflection, there's really absolutley nothing special about this book (also the retelling aspect is super bad) yet it wasn't all too bad so yeah, two stars I guess.
Let's just work through the tropes. There's a girl with a dead parent, strange inexplicable powers, a boarding school in the middle of nowhere, a snarky best friend, a shy girl friend, a guy friend - emphasis on friend, an immediately bitchy enemy girl, a hot guy who shares girl's powers and won't tell her everything instead dropping clues one word at a time every 2648 years (give or take a couple thousand years), and yes instalove that's convenient explained away in a really dumb way.
There you have it, a quick run down of this book. See, our main character, Rune, is sent to this boarding school for music because she has this urge to perfectly (and I mean perfectly) belt out opera whenever she hears music playing and hopefully she's able to tae her urges at said school. When she gets there, she keeps seeing this mysterious guy lurking around on the grounds and he creepily arranges a trap in an abandoned church to meet her. They immediately fall in love (like his hotness is mentioned every time they meet) and it's revealed to her that she's a paranormal being and that the original Phantom is plotting to do wierd stuff to her to get his original Christine back. The rest of the book is Rune discovering more about her powers and the history of the Phantom and then an ultimate battle that ends in a HEA and tada we've reached the end.
There are quite a few parts of this book that are really ridiculous. For starters, the insta love is explained because Rune and Thorn (it's YA, what kind of names did you expect) are so called "twin flames" aka they were actually the same person in a past life but that soul go split into two bodies (which immediately begs the question why the opportunity for a LGBT relationship wasn't siezed?). Then there's a club that the Phantom runs for reasons explained in the book (ridiculous in and of themselves) and the wierdest thing is that somehow Rune gets her and her 5 friends in somehow getting through all the adults in the school and at the club. Finally there's the way that all this crazy stuff is going on in the school yet no one really says anything about it pretending it all just doesn't exist.
I surprisingly wished there was more coverage of the actual schooling because a lot of interesting stuff happened there (the school part revolves around auditioning for part that somehow takes over a month to get) and it was really relegated to back drop which I get because you need to get the whole paranormal part of the book out there. I also wished that the pacing of the book could be fixed because we get a giant slow info dump for the first 100 pages or so of the ebook and then random fast almost rushed action scenes and then a lot more info dumping by Thorn along the way. The ending alo needs a lot of help because there's a whole noble sacrifice thing going on and then the sacrifice is wasted and I mean that's just plain dumb. If you're going to force a character to "die" for the greater good, please follow through (sorry for spoiling) and actually keep everyone who's supposed to be dead dead
Read this book if you want, just know that you're going to have to roll with a lot of unoriginal and sometimes confusing things to actually get to the end.
Let's just work through the tropes. There's a girl with a dead parent, strange inexplicable powers, a boarding school in the middle of nowhere, a snarky best friend, a shy girl friend, a guy friend - emphasis on friend, an immediately bitchy enemy girl, a hot guy who shares girl's powers and won't tell her everything instead dropping clues one word at a time every 2648 years (give or take a couple thousand years), and yes instalove that's convenient explained away in a really dumb way.
There you have it, a quick run down of this book. See, our main character, Rune, is sent to this boarding school for music because she has this urge to perfectly (and I mean perfectly) belt out opera whenever she hears music playing and hopefully she's able to tae her urges at said school. When she gets there, she keeps seeing this mysterious guy lurking around on the grounds and he creepily arranges a trap in an abandoned church to meet her. They immediately fall in love (like his hotness is mentioned every time they meet) and it's revealed to her that she's a
Spoiler
vampireThere are quite a few parts of this book that are really ridiculous. For starters, the insta love is explained because Rune and Thorn (it's YA, what kind of names did you expect) are so called "twin flames" aka they were actually the same person in a past life but that soul go split into two bodies (which immediately begs the question why the opportunity for a LGBT relationship wasn't siezed?). Then there's a club that the Phantom runs for reasons explained in the book (ridiculous in and of themselves) and the wierdest thing is that somehow Rune gets her and her 5 friends in somehow getting through all the adults in the school and at the club. Finally there's the way that all this crazy stuff is going on in the school yet no one really says anything about it pretending it all just doesn't exist.
I surprisingly wished there was more coverage of the actual schooling because a lot of interesting stuff happened there (the school part revolves around auditioning for part that somehow takes over a month to get) and it was really relegated to back drop which I get because you need to get the whole paranormal part of the book out there. I also wished that the pacing of the book could be fixed because we get a giant slow info dump for the first 100 pages or so of the ebook and then random fast almost rushed action scenes and then a lot more info dumping by Thorn along the way. The ending alo needs a lot of help because there's a whole noble sacrifice thing going on and then the sacrifice is wasted and I mean that's just plain dumb. If you're going to force a character to "die" for the greater good, please follow through (sorry for spoiling) and actually keep everyone who's supposed to be dead dead
Read this book if you want, just know that you're going to have to roll with a lot of unoriginal and sometimes confusing things to actually get to the end.