The Rose Society | Book Review

Title: The Rose Society (The Young Elites #2)

Author: Marie Lu

Published: October 13th 2015 by G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers

Goodreads summary: From New York Times bestselling author Marie Lu comes the second book in the exhilarating Young Elites series

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 that murdered her love, the Crown Prince Enzo Valenciano.

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?

REVIEW

To be honest, a few months ago, I wasn’t beyond excitement at the mere idea of reading this book. The Young Elites left off more on an open ending, and there were other books published the same month I was more looking forward to. But, this summer, my boyfriend read The Young Elites in French and really enjoyed it, which renewed my interest for this series. So of course, when I saw a paperback version at my library a few days ago, even though the book hasn’t been released yet, I jumped on the occasion, and bought it. Let me tell you guys, if I had had the time to read this in one setting, I would have, because it was way better than the first-who was already pretty good.

In the beginning of the book, we got to discover more of the world, because we just saw Kenettra in The Young Elites. I always love when an author expands the world. Adelina was indeed on a journey to find Elites and thought she might have chance to do so in other places, because she’s well known in Kenettra and was casted out by the Daggers. Something I really like about this world is the culture, from the festivities to the religion, I find everything so interesting.

For the characters, we mainly saw Adelina’s descent to the darkness. Marie Lu did a fantastic job at writing that. Adelina totally became the White Wolf in this instalment, her powers fed on fear and hate, and she even enjoyed it, hurting people. The more she was using her powers, the more we could feel she was slowly losing control, Marie Lu wrote it in a unique way that made a lot of sense. Because Adelina is searching for new Elites, new characters were introduced; I really enjoyed them and their relationships.

I really enjoyed to read from other characters’ perspective, like Teren, Raffaele or Maeve, but I found a little disconcerting that it switched from first person (for Adelina) to third person (for the others). This way, I felt a little more out of their heads. However, don’t misunderstand me, their storylines were really interesting, but the switch wasn’t something I liked and their chapters were way smaller than Adelina’s, sometimes it was hard understanding why they were inserted in the first place.

The plot was truly fantastic. Honestly, it surprised me in the best ways. In the beginning, it was a little slower but then, someone bets against Adelina she won’t be able to do something and from that point, it was like:

I wasn’t bored a single moment, I just wanted to know what would happen next, every time. The ending really makes me eager to read the next book because it is something the characters will have to resolve, and I can’t wait to see how they will try to.