The Rose Society review

The Rose Society
by Marie Lu
Hardcover
Published October 13^th 2015
395 pages
my rating: 5 out 5 stars

Synopsis:
Once upon a time, a girl had a father, a prince, a society of friends. Then they betrayed her, and she destroyed them all.

Adelina Amouteru’s heart has suffered at the hands of both family and friends, turning her down the bitter path of revenge. Now known and feared as the White Wolf, she and her sister flee Kenettra to find other Young Elites in the hopes of building her own army of allies. Her goal: to strike down the Inquisition Axis, the white-cloaked soldiers who nearly killed her.

But Adelina is no heroine. Her powers, fed only by fear and hate, have started to grow beyond her control. She does not trust her newfound Elite friends. Teren Santoro, leader of the Inquisition, wants her dead. And her former friends, Raffaele and the Dagger Society, want to stop her thirst for vengeance. Adelina struggles to cling to the good within her. But how can someone be good, when her very existence depends on darkness?

Bestselling author Marie Lu delivers another heart-pounding adventure in this exhilarating sequel to The Young Elites.

 

My review:

First off, can I just say that “Once upon a time, a girl had a father, a prince, a society of friends, then they betrayed her, and she destroyed them all.” Is quite possibly one of my favorite sentences ever written? It just, it gives me goosebumps. This sequel was everything I wanted and more.

I loved this so much, it was dark and twisted, and this book grabbed hold of me and never left my thoughts. I did have to put it down a couple of times to just pull my mind out of the darkness that this book holds. I still don’t know how to gather my thoughts around this, but I’m going to try.

One thing I was thinking about while reading this was the difference of evil between Teren and Adelina, they’re both villains and both evil, I had a thought to use the Dungeons and Dragons alignment chart to help gain perceptive of these two and it was a bit amusing to apply the chart to all the characters. There were some great characters introduced in this book too, Maeve was an interesting character, but I had figured that Tristan but he didn’t have much to do with the outcome. I thought that Magiano was amazing, he was hilarious and his personality brought much-needed humor to lighten up this story.

Adelina- Tempered Evil on the cusp of Chaotic Evil
Teren- Lawful Evil with extreme swings to Chaotic Evil
Enzo- Chaotic Good
Gemma- Tempered Good
Lucent- Chaotic Good
Raffaelle- I’m torn between Lawful Good and Chaotic Good since he has no qualms about having Elites that don’t meet his standards killed instead of just having them sent away,
Maeve- Chaotic Good (The leaders have a theme going on I guess)
Magiano- Chaotic Neutral
Sergio- Chaotic Neutral
Violetta- Tempered Neutral

Of course, this is just how I see them if you disagree let me know what you think in the comments down below.

Seeing Adelina’s power growing was unsettling, it’s truly terrifying what she can do and that she loves torturing and doesn’t bat an eye at killing. I was loving her moments where her dark thoughts kept tempting her when she could feel other people in pain or suffering and how it strengthened her. I was pleased to see her accept being bad, sounds kind of terrible but even if she wanted to be good I just don’t think it’s possible for her to do that.

The ending to this was insane, I’m not even sure if I was breathing while I was reading it, just super intense and so much happened! I was trying to tell Corey about it and the story is so complex that it was very hard for me to try to sum up.

All I can say about this book is holy hell.