The Rose Bargain

Aaahhhh this damn book! I have so many complaints!!!!
* This is not like the cruel prince at all. So a prince is cruel, but only for the last hour or so. That too wasn't shocking because you advertise the book as cruel prince and then nothing happens for majority of the book. Cruel Prince had so much going for it. This was leftovers of leftovers.

* The romance sucked! It wasn't insta love but it was also not built up properly.

* This wasn't a StAnDaLOnE?!? (This one's on me).

* Who is advertising all these romantasy books? 100 years of jail for you!

* You'd expect that a book advertised as being similar to cruel prince would have similar characters like Jude or Cardan. Nope.
A knife? A single knife? Nope.
Smart and cunning MC? Nope. (Bland)
Slow romantic build-up? Nope.

The only similarity was that it had faeries. Bram was soooooo boring. Whatever Emmett and Ivy had going on was beyond my comprehension. My ass is too demi for this.

The only good thing is that the audiobook was done well, chapters were short so I flew through them.

Future me, avoid the sequel! It's not worth it gurl.

Wow I loved this so much!
The slow building of the world and the story really had me captivated. It was a lot of fun to be part of Ivy and Emmets slow burn.
Can't wait for the next book in the Duology

The more I think about it, the less anything in this book makes sense.

I did like the girls and the nuance given to their relationships, trying to work together while not trusting each other. Also the writing was pretty good.

Unfortunately, I didn't like anything else.

(I would've preferred if Bram had been the love interest and she'd been genuinely trying to win the competition, to make the ton regret turning their backs on her family. It wouldn't fix all the plot holes, but it would've been a lot more interesting.)

My goodness was this so fun to read! My suggestion is to go into this blind. Don't read the synopsis, don't read reviews, just let the story take you on a journey. Finding out how events are to unfold throughout the story was just a joy to witness. Thank you so much to HarperCollins and NetGalley for the amazing opportunity to read an ARC of The Rose Bargain. I had an absolute blast with this read.

I'm not going to give a plot summary. Please go into this blindly! The vibes however I will give.. if you enjoyed the fae from The Cruel Prince series, the overall story that was Phantasma, and the time period of Bridgerton then this is the story for you. It's marketed at young adult and while I believe that to be hold true, the characters are all over 18 years. There is one sex scene in the book but it does not go into the detail nor is it long. Perfectly fit for an upper YA novel in my opinion.

While reading I was listening to an 1800's classical playlist and it was just so immersed into the story. I finished this in one day. It's a very quick read and one you won't be able to put down.

I do have some complaints about the book but they go into spoiler territory so I can't really talk about it.. I will say I wish we got a little more time with one of the characters so we could have a better understanding of them.

I highly suggest checking out this book. You will have a blast while you're in it!

Final rating: 4 stars ✨