The world was somewhat fascinating - love me some historical regency magic fiction, though the story was basically exactly Bound by Blood and Sand and I liked the execution much better in that series. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Eves ripped off anybody, just that the main plots were incredibly similar.

Unfortunately, the MC was uninspiring, kinda a twit, and men kept falling over themselves for her. Honestly lost track of how many guys she kissed. I think 4, which is a bit absurd.

Won't be coming back for Round 2. Just didn't care for the story or the characters enough to stick around.

Based on the synopsis, this book really pulled me in. However, upon reading it, it really let me down. The plot and characters were really lacking and it just didn't draw me in. Although she is young, it was difficult for me to like the main character and the situation in the plot was somewhat confusing. To me, those are the most important elements of a book and my overall impression of this book were lowered drastically.

I have tried picking up this book to read for a while now and I haven't had much luck with it. Just not for me.

I loved this book! The full review will be posted soon at kaitgoodwin.com/books! Thank you very much for this wonderful opportunity to connect books to their readers!

The review will be updated! In short, while I personally didn't love it and think it to be my new favorite, I also don't think it's that much worser than other people's new favorite; meaning, I think this book unfortunately received a lot of tough love (and hate) for some reason. I truly think it has all the popular tropes in most of the popular YA books, and that's the only reason I can think why people perhaps critiqued it harsher, for there's a lot of competition out there featuring similar elements. But like I said, personally I don't hold this against the book. I think it attempted a cool concept and pulled off some of it. I didn't care for the romance, but that's just me.

I've read certain reviews that apparently a noticeable amount of Hungarian was incorrectly used. I know nothing about Hungarian, but as someone who see potential in this book, I really suggest more efforts to be put into this area, so that no readers can fault future books to be failing at the language department. Because honestly, those types of reviews probably have a lot sway and it just doesn't put the book in a good light.

WHY DID I LISTEN TO BLOOD ROSE REBELLION?
Blood Rose Rebellion by Rosalyn Eves immediately intrigued me based on the title alone. Like, I would assume there’s going to be a body count. Also, there’s going to be people rising up against the powers that be and I AM HERE FOR IT. Of course, the official summary talks about magic, money and blood and girl I am READY FOR THIS BOOK. Not so ready that I would read it in a timely manner, however. When I saw my library had this available via audio CD, I waited months – got through all my Overdrive and Hoopla audiobooks that are also books on my Netgalley queue. AND FINALLY I was like, okay the time for CDs is nigh.

WHAT’S THE STORY HERE?
Rosalyn Eves’ Blood Rose Rebellion follows teenage Anna Arden who is considered Barren meaning that she can’t even do simple magic. This sucks because while her family is high society — the Luminate — she doesn’t really get to be part of that society because of her lack of ability. So, her older sister is about to debut with this complicated show off magical spell, but then Anna accidentally breaks the spell and ruins her sisters debut. So, she’s exiled to Hungary – which is where her family is originally from. There is a lot of tension there, there’s also bits with the Roma who are treated terribly and a part which was super hard to read which involved a baby. And well, we get a sense that SOMETHING big is going to happen, maybe a rebellion of sorts?!

HOW DID I LIKE IT?
Overall, I liked this book. I know I will continue with the series. It isn’t the sort where I will continue with audio – namely because my library doesn’t have it nor does Scribd. However, I get the sense that I will like the next book more because I am physically reading it. The society tensions were fascinating. The whole magic thing was also interesting too — I will be interested to see where this goes next.

HOW’S THE NARRATION?
I feel sort of meh on the narration. For one thing, I had to listen at 1x speed, so the OG speed due to listening to the CDs. I could only listen in the car. And well, my attention wandered a lot due to what I now perceive as slow narration. That’s where listening to a sped up audiobook gets you into trouble I guess. There’s not anything wrong with Fiona Hardingham’s narration in Blood Rose Rebellion per se, just, IT FEELS SO SLOW at 1x.

DNF at 40%

Initially I thought the Victorian setting, a secret society of magicians and Hungarian folklore would be for me.
Turns out, it's not.
I'm not going to rate this - it's been over a year and every time I go back to this I'm just "meh" about it.
This may be for some YA Fantasy readers, but I think anyone who's fairly savvy with the genre will be quick to see this for the unoriginal, slow story that it is.

Thanks for hanging with me for a year on this though - Netgalley! I just couldn't push through.

For a book that I actually enjoyed quite a bit, Blood Rose Rebellion took me a seeming eternity to read, though in reality it was more like two weeks. Blood Rose Rebellion is a debut novel, and that shows, but there’s a lot of promise here.

I was immediately won over by Anna’s narrative voice. In my opinion, Eves successfully navigates the difficulty of writing a naive young heroine and not having her seem like the biggest, most annoying idiot. Anna’s basically bought into everything society ever taught her. She’s young, and she’s always been unpopular, due to her lack of magic. Her main desire in life is to be loved, and she makes mistakes as a result, but her voice is so charming and consistent that this made me love her, rather than want to shake her.

Anna has a pretty traditional “check your privilege” narrative arc, and it works well. I like that, when first asked to join the rebellion in Hungary, her response is a strong negative, because she wants the upper crust people to like her. Anna’s got a lot to learn but she’s loving and kind. She truly comes off as a sixteen year old heroine, not one of the oddly mature teens so prevalent in YA.

Plot-wise, I’m less in love. Once Anna left England for Hungary, the novel lost its sense of cohesion and began to move in fits and starts. It certainly doesn’t help that only Anna was truly well-developed. Her romance with Romani Gábor made me cringe because, though it’s clearly trying to set aside the stereotype of the “gypsy lover,” he doesn’t have much development aside from clever, hot, Romani guy. The plot takes a long time to get to the place you inevitably know it’s heading, and there’s a fair bit of discomfort along the way.

That strong narrative voice and the humor that often appears in it won me over, and I’m positive Rosalyn Eves’ books will only get better from here.

I really enjoyed this book. There were things that were confusing about the rules of the magic, but for the most part, the magic was really interesting. The concept of the binding itself was weird and hard to understand. I liked the characters for the most part, but Anna was hard to connect with. It was also confusing about the world. Am I to believe that the world is just ordinary 19th century Europe but with magic? I don't know if I buy that. I liked it, but these questions took away from the overall book for me.

Anna's lack magical abilities causes her to feel constantly both overshadowed by her brilliant sister and excluded from society. After Anna ruins her sisters's debut, she is exiled to Hungary. However, Anna finds in Hungary that she may have abilities coveted by those who wish to overthrow the social order. Blood Rose Rebellion has an exciting premise, but is occasionally weighed down by info dumps and kissing.

Oh how I loved this story. My father and his family are Hungarian, so the folklore and spirit of this story is like hearing my Grandma tell me stories again. The fantastic magic thrown in just made it even better. Cannot wait to see what else this author produces

This book started out so well. I was truly enthralled by Anna and her family's interactions and felt Anna's need to fit into the Luminate Society. However, by the end of the book, I found her to be the most inconsistent character. Her character development was not a thing and it seemed to me she only cared about anyone when it suited her. Only when people did as she asked did she care and it was extremely frustrating. Overall I enjoyed the book but truly hope the characters have much more development in Lost Crow Conspiracy.

I had trouble with this one. It took a long time for me to finish and I'm surprised I did. I just got really bored in this plot. The premise sounds amazing but it just didn't keep up. Maybe I had too high of expectations.

The reason I found it quite boring was there was just so much information. I mean loads and paragraphs full of information. I get trying to educate but man, it was too much. It broke up the story and had me getting lost. I also felt like the plot was a bit all over the place. I also felt the characters just didn't have any depth and were just bland.

The author did a ton of research and it showed, just too much..

I had a hard time finishing this book, which is why I unfortunately let the archive date come and go. I am always happy to find historical books that take place in less traditional places, but overall it fell flat for me.

This book…oh, it was so close to being something cool. And it dropped the ball on various fronts, alas. Partly because the main character’s plot was dull, and partly because the side characters were super interesting and yet remained side characters.

I was pretty intrigued by the set-up of this book, and I was highly invested in the interpersonal/family drama going on. I loved Anna’s predicament, her anger at it, her determination to find a place for herself in a society that kept trying to force her out. I loved the friction between her and her family/her sister, the jerkass boy, the drama, it was great.

And then they went to Hungary, and the conflict setting went much wider than one girl and her family, and…well, I’ll put it this way: I had no problems with Anna as a character, but I had a lot of problems with Anna as a protagonist to this particular story. It’s a story about revolution and oppression and fighting back and all that, but Anna is an outsider with no skin in the game other than what she puts in voluntarily. And, to be frank, she doesn’t volunteer much. She says she loves her ‘adopted’ country, but in terms of putting actions to those words…meh. On the other hand, everyone around her is super invested in plotting their rebellion, in reviving or protecting their culture, and there’s all sorts of messy in-group fighting and plots and machinations and and and….and it’s all in the corners, visible only when Anna deigns to leave her big fancy house. Anna, for her part, finds out she has this cool magic and never once bothers to test it, experiment with it, or literally do anything at all with it. She finds out she can undo spells, has someone ask her to undo the BIGGEST SPELL EVER, and then…waffles about deciding. Doesn’t do a lick of work to see if she can or not, or figure out how her powers work. Just…snoozefest. Just like she finds out there’s a rebellion brewing and her first, last, and only contribution is to sit in a pub and watch people talk about it.

Anna would have been perfectly serviceable as a bitter-but-determined troublemaker with family problems, but as a revolutionary, I really wanted to follow the people actually revolting. I guess I’m just funny that way.

Additionally, I was highly uncomfortable with Anna’s relationship with a Romani boy named Gabor. A huge chunk of the book is about how the Romani were basically on the bottom-rung of the shit-upon ladder, and how the Hungarians were being oppressed by Austria but then turned around and passed that on down to the Romani without even blinking. And then here comes Anna, she of the riches and privilege, a noble-class girl who can literally pack up and leave the country if she wants, and the book tries to put her on the same level of oppression as Gabor. There’s whole scenes of Anna trying to compare her own situation to that of the Romani, and even a scene where she does one random nice big gesture so Gabor will be all “ah, she’s one of the good white folks, I guess I can’t be mad at her now.” It…um…no. Just no. It’s not like an Anna/Gabor type romance can’t happen, but not when you ignore all of the Anna’s privilege and position and try to claim any level of hardship is the same as all other levels as well.

The writing was evocative and the setting and mythology interesting, the magic system interesting as well. In fact, the magic system was the only thing that kept me reading until the end. But overall, I’m not sure I would suggest it. The majority of the book just doesn’t stand up to its own promises or strong opening.

This period novel starts out strong. Anna is of the Luminate, the higher strata of society, the special people who wield magic. Unfortunately Anna herself has no magic and is considered “barren”. When she accidentally ruins her older sister’s big event of unveiling her magic, her family banishes Anna to Hungary with her grandmother. The Hungarian setting is quite unique, although a similar landscape set in an earlier time is found in The Conqueror’s Saga by Kiersten White. In her banishment Anna meets two relatives who liven up the book significantly – Matyas and Noemi. They add a spark to every scene they are in. There’s also the Romani people who add more depth and flare to the tale. The treatment of this group is emblematic of the prejudices and bias that they have suffered throughout time. Gabor is one of the Romani who suffers at the hands of the local townsfolk. He adds great dimension to Anna’s story and is a strong and likable character. Despite the interesting setting and characters, the plot falters a bit along the way, becoming too cumbersome. The complexity of the magical plotline doesn’t help. By the end, the story picks up as Anna is faced with making decisions that have serious consequences. Eaves adds historical information at the end of the book that is useful in terms of understanding the context of the period. 3.5*

Shocked that so many people hated this one because I liked it.

A story about a girl who discovers that being not enough is enough for more than enough, and most importantly, herself. Historical fantasy at its best. In the end, it was a book about fighting for what is right, with thought. I knew what I wanted to happen, but seeing Anna going through the process was both exhilarating and maddening. I'm glad she made the choice she made because at the end of the day, rebellions are built on hope.

Ok, now that I got that rogue one out of me (lol), I must say I enjoyed this novel. It was very true to what I expect of historical fantasy, blending the lines between the real and the fantasy. Rosalyn Eves did a great of job of representing what was and what wasn't in a way that leaves no doubt that it all was.

I particularly like that it is also a coming of age novel. It reinforces the idea that we can not only decided who we want to be, but that we can fight for that even in the midst of oppression, whether we fail or win, we should try.

Anna's trials are no doubt still to continue, and I for one, cannot wait to see what happens. Sure, we know what happened in Hungary, but what will happen in London, and what choices will Anna make, will she embrace her new found knowledge of what she is or seek to find a space for herself in a world that might not be quite as changed as she believes it is? What about Catherine and James? And what about everything that once was and that is again? How will the ancients fare in this new world?

Received as an eARC on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

This book opened up with a set-up that showed so much promise. Anna, a noble woman of the Luminate class, is marked for not having magic, disrupts her sister's debut because her magic cancels other magic. She then gets taken to Hungary to be hidden away from the scandal and learns of the magic holding together this AU pre-World-War-I Europe. It should have been interesting, but the plot was fraught with problems.

Anna simply had no drive and felt a bit like a lovesick fool from the get go. I have no problem with my heroines kissing multiple boys, but when each one is plot important, it makes me raise an eyebrow several times. The first boy betrays her, the second one introduces her to Romani culture, and the third is her cousin. Every moment with Gábor and his Romani culture raised some red flags about the representation there. What made me most uncomfortable was the entire conversation where he talked about navigating both Hungarian and Romani cultures. It was poorly executed.

Pacing is also a word lost on this work. The story didn't start until the last 15-20% of the read. I cannot tell you about most details that happened in the middle. The reveals were rushed, completely rushed. It was especially infuriating because it was clear that this was done to make way for a sequel and it was part of the reason it took me so long to finish.

The premise wasn't enough to save this work that lacked proper characterization and representation and any sense of pacing.

A fluffy addition to the already crowded YA fantasy field.