Another fiction book off my TBR pile! This time, it’s Roses and Rot, a book about sisters who go to an artist retreat that is not all it seems. And by not all it seems, I mean one person from the year will be sent to live with the Fae for seven years as the tithe and, when they return, they will have all their artistic dreams come true. If they survive being the tithe.
The main character, Imogen, is an author and her sister is a dancer. As an author that was once a dancer with dreams of going pro1 so this book felt like it was targeted at me. I really liked watching their relationship develop as the book progressed. There were a lot of relationships in the book that weren’t romantic and it was great to see all of them evolve throughout the story.
Well, everything but relationships with mothers. It seems all mothers in this book were terrible.
The way the book was set up with the Fae and the main story line was interesting, particularly since the way used to make it feel more like a fairy tale was to intersperse little anecdotes frames as fairy tales throughout the book. It worked a little against the book because the implication is that these vignettes are Imogen’s writing and I didn’t find them to be as amazing as I think I was meant to, but it certainly helped to keep the mood and tone consistent.
Overall, I really liked it! it was a little slow in places, but having a break from YA and seeing how urban fantasy stories for an older audience could be done without it revolving around a romance was refreshing for me and I had a lot of fun with the story.
- Parents were not fond of this idea, so that didn’t happen! [↩]