*Note: This ARC review will be posted on my tumblr blog on August 12th, a month before the book is published.

Summary:
This is a twist on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet from Rosaline's point of view. Rosaline Capulet is on the precipice of being sent away to a nunnery for good, so she decides to take life by the reins while she can. In doing so, she meets Romeo and has a brief affair with him. But when Romeo's true colors are revealed and he turns his wandering eye on her cousin Juliet, Rosaline has no choice but to stop him.

Review:
So all the sex in this book can be classified as dub-con as Rosaline is underage— I thought this was worth putting out there right off the bat. This is also not a historical romance; it's closer to historical fiction, and really well-written historical fiction at that. The descriptions are lush and lyrical, and you really get a fuller sense of the Verona Shakespeare might have imagined (he was very taken with Italy as a setting, but never visited, according to Natasha's author's note).

I loved the characterization of Rosaline. Rosaline's mother has just died, and she's faced with being sent to a nunnery rather than being married off. For a relatively outspoken and forthright teenager (she's fifteen? or sixteen?), it's a difficult situation to accept, so her decision to take these twelve days before she's sent away and throw caution to the wind totally makes sense. I also really liked her relationship with Juliet as well as Tybalt. Natasha humanized both of them, and even if Rosaline/Tybalt as a concept was a little jarring to read, I was on their side.

What was a little more difficult to read was Romeo's characterization: He is written as a sexual predator. Like sure, he's smooth and charming in a way I never quite got into in Shakespeare's original work, but it did come across here (at first at least), but you read the way he behaves with Rosaline and it's textbook predatory behavior: the love bombing, the manipulations, plying her with alcohol before sex, "forbidding" her from seeing family, promising he'll marry her, etc.. I was shocked when Rosaline described him up close as having a few grey hairs, and I was like, how old is this man??

Romeo's sins don't end there either. His trifling with girls is actually a part of a wider, more horrific conspiracy. And Friar Laurence is involved 😬. By the end of the story, a lot of the events are carried out similarly to the original text, with Rosaline watching it all go down, but she's no longer a passive observer.

Overall:
I read Romeo and Juliet in 9th grade and didn't think much of it, but reading Fair Rosaline actually made me revise my stance on a lot of the actions characters in the book took. Now, I'm more inclined to give them some grace because they were teenagers. That too, teenagers facing some very grown-up decisions. Remember, Juliet was going to be betrothed to Count Paris, a much older man, in the original text. No wonder she took the leap with Romeo! Similarly in this book, Rosaline had just lost her mother, and was likely going to be sent to a nunnery for the rest of her life by her father. It actually makes sense she'd meet and sleep with a guy she just met because again, teenagers. The adults in this story are complicit in a lot of the harm that comes to their children.

All that being said, it was.... definitely a Choice for Natasha to write Romeo a) as old as he was (we don't know how old he is in the original but he's definitely on the older end of the spectrum here) and b) turn a character that seems fuckboy-ish at worst in the original play into an absolute monster, one who knows exactly what he's doing. It's an interesting interpretation, because it turns a cautionary tale into one with an outright villain and his victims. I'm reserving my judgement on exactly what this sort of interpretation means in the broader context of Romeo and Juliet adaptations as a whole, but by itself, I can't deny it was a pretty great book.

Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review.

I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I went into this book expecting something campy and fun like the new Disney+ movie Rosaline. Instead I got the play Shakespeare never wrote (or frankly could have ever written). This gorgeous retelling is done in the style of the original Romeo and Juliet and done so well that I could barely tell what was Solomons' words and what was an original line from the play. It adds depth and dimension to all of the characters, not just the forgotten Rosaline. I loved the choice to draw inspiration from Shakespeare's other Rosaline(d)s (who number among some of my favourite Shakespeare heroines) and the result is a unique, wonderful female lead. This is a book for lovers of Maggie O'Farrell or Kristin Hannah. There are no swooning maidens to be found here.

Ripped from Shakespeare’s hands, this retelling was masterful and incredibly ingenious.

This book surmises that perhaps Romeo wasn’t the man depicted as he was in Romeo and Juliet, but a predatory man with an insatiable appetite for gaining live of young, impressionable women… and I LOVED it!

This is by far, the best Shakespearean retelling and one of the best retellings in general, that I have ever read. It just makes so much more sense. While it’s a fictional tale conjured from another fictional tale, the story of Romeo and Juliet had become so real, and I think this way of portraying the story was absolutely perfect.

Instead of hearing of Rosaline through passing stories, we get a story straight from her mouth. We see her go through all of the motions of falling for the man who was very clearly grooming her. The different, nobler side of Tybalt was, maybe, one of my favorite parts of this story. And then, to see as Rosaline must watch the man she loved fall for someone else, the way we all know he does with Juliet…

This book was fantastic and I absolutely recommend it!

Ladies, beware the Romeos of the world. Oh my goodness, this is how the story should have been told - this is such a refreshing and relatable perspective on what women deal with and our resilience. Bravo!

Thanks so much to NetGalley and SourceBooks Landmark for an advance readers copy, in exchange for an honest review. Fair Rosaline is a bit of a twist on the classic Romeo and Juliet story, told from Rosaline’s point of view. The story opens with Rosaline being told she is going to be sent to a nunnery, falling into a brief affair with Romeo beforehand, and then trying to save her cousin, Juliet, when she realizes that Romeo has set his sights on her.

Overall, I think this book brought a fresh perspective to Romeo and Juliet and I enjoyed getting to see more developed personalities of some of my favorite characters. I was able to relate to the characters more in this story than I was in the original Shakespearean play and I think it was great to see Rosaline especially, who doesn’t have as large of a role in the play, have a lot of spunk and fire as the story goes on. I did think that some of the dialogue and language was a little awkward, as the Shakespearean style language seemed to be more interspersed, rather than seamlessly included. But, this was not enough to majorly detract from the story and I still enjoyed it.

I’d definitely recommend this to Romeo and Juliet fans, fans of classic story retellings, and/or fans of novels with strong feminist undertones!

A sharply seductive, fresh retelling of Romeo and Juliet.

The reader is swept off their feet alongside Rosaline when she meets handsome, broad-shouldered Romeo Montague at a party. Rosaline, enjoying her last few days of freedom before entering a nunnery, is eager for anything that could help her escape her boring fate. Her chemistry with Romeo is electrifying, he gives her sweet tokens and knows just the right words to say. When Rosaline starts to notice red flags, it's worth ignoring for another hour spent in Romeo's arms. But when Romeo turns his sights to her thirteen-year-old cousin Juliet, Rosaline is furious.

This retelling felt very fresh due to the new point of view. It's fun to see Rosaline given a voice in the story. When Rosaline turns from lovesick to sick of love, she becomes a force to be reckoned with. I love how all the original characters are there - Tybalt, Nurse, Juliet - but their personalities leap off the page in a way they never could in the original Shakespeare. The descriptions of the decadent parties, lush gardens and romantic balconies will transport the reader to another time.

After reading this feminist retelling of Romeo and Juliet, you'll never see the characters the same way again.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.