These Roses Aren’t Sweet…They’ll Kill You In Your Sleep // The Rose Society by Marie Lu

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The Rose Society  by Marie Lu
Published October 13th 2015 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers
Classified as Fantasy & Young Adult
Obtained as Audiobook

   

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 flees Kenettra with her sister 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.

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Content & Trigger Warnings

Murder and abuse. If I missed any, please let me know!

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Let’s Make Some Waffles

We all know what the good guys look like: they’re the ones who ride up on large white stallions as big as school buses and rescue the damsel in distress. They help little old ladies cross the street, they save runaway baby carriages, and they never, EVER leave home without their favorite accessory – an incorruptible moral compass.

We all know what the bad guys look like: they have crooked noses, crooked teeth, and even more crooked personalities. They want to set the world on fire like it’s Chicago in 1871. And as it all burns to the ground, they’ll do their best, most bone-chilling Maniacal Evil Laugh™.

We know the good guys. We know the bad guys. Now read The Rose Society and know this: you know nothing.

The Story

In the second installment of The Young Elite series, Adelina Amouteru is back and quickly heading down the dark road of revenge. Fueled by her red-hot anger at Raffaele’s betrayal and her heartbreak over Enzo, Adelina feverishly searches for new Elites that are willing to rally behind her cause. As she becomes more and more powerful, her blood-tipped choices grow harder and harder to justify. But with every sharply horrible choice she makes, I somehow felt more pity for her, not less. I love antiheroines, and Adelina is the perfect example of one – she is darkly ruthlessness, yet her intense desire for love and acceptance make her endearingly human.

The Characters

Consciously or not, we tend to sort the characters of any story into two categories: good or bad. Hero or villain. But in The Rose Society, author Marie Lu challenges the very definition of those words with her deliciously complex cast of morally-grey characters. Adelina, Teren, Magiano – I definitely couldn’t label them as the “good guys” and be able to pass a lying test. But Raffaele, Enzo, and the other Daggers – I don’t think they entirely fit that description either.

A quote from Gabrielle Zevin’s book, Elsewhere comes to mind: “People, you’ll find, aren’t usually all good or bad. Sometimes they’re just a little bit good and a whole lot bad. And sometimes they’re mostly good with a dash of bad. And most of us, well, we fall in the middle somewhere.”  No character in The Rose Society is a “good guy.” No character is “a bad guy.” Most of them fall somewhere in the middle, and I loved that about this book.

The Twist

The thing I loved most about The Rose Society, however, was that it takes every trope, every stereotype, and smashes them all to bits like the Incredible Hulk in a greenhouse. The typical heroine, the love triangle, even the fight between good and evil – Marie Lu brilliantly deconstructs these staples of YA literature and rebuilds them in new and exciting ways. The MC succumbs to darkness, the love interest never loved the heroine in the first place, and the “good guys”…well, maybe they aren’t all that good after all.

This book is a wildly entertaining, darkly haunting read that makes you yell, “I can’t look!” and then peep through your fingers anyways.

Have you read The Rose Society?

Did you like The Young Elites? Why or why not?

Tell me in the comments!