YA Book Review: Blood Rose Rebellion by Rosalyn Eves

Title: Blood Rose Rebellion

Author: Rosalyn Eves

Series: Blood Rose Rebellion #1

Genre: Young Adult Historical Fantasy 

Publisher: Knopf Books For Young Readers

Pub Date: March 28, 2017

Pages: 416

My Copy: Courtesy of NetGalley and Knof Books

Warning: Spoilers may be in my review, so read at own risk

Book Summary:

Sixteen-year-old Anna Arden is barred from society by a defect of blood. Though her family is part of the Luminate, powerful users of magic, she is Barren, unable to perform the simplest spells. Anna would do anything to belong. But her fate takes another course when, after inadvertently breaking her sister’s debutante spell—an important chance for a highborn young woman to show her prowess with magic—Anna finds herself exiled to her family’s once powerful but now crumbling native Hungary.

Her life might well be over.

In Hungary, Anna discovers that nothing is quite as it seems. Not the people around her, from her aloof cousin Noémi to the fierce and handsome Romani Gábor. Not the society she’s known all her life, for discontent with the Luminate is sweeping the land. And not her lack of magic. Isolated from the only world she cares about, Anna still can’t seem to stop herself from breaking spells.

As rebellion spreads across the region, Anna’s unique ability becomes the catalyst everyone is seeking. In the company of nobles, revolutionaries, and Romanies, Anna must choose: deny her unique power and cling to the life she’s always wanted, or embrace her ability and change that world forever. 

Book Review:

A totally fantastic book that hooked me right from the start. Anna is an individual who feels like she is an outcast. She is an outcast because of her lack of magic or so she is led to believe. The Luminate are the elite and rule society because of their ability to use magic. Anna doesn’t have any or so she has been told.

Anna is like a person who feels alone in this society. She also has the habit of messing things up. What makes it more complicated is that her sister is making her debut and casting spells to impress the head members of the Luminate. Of course Catherine’s Fiance Freddy is not a nice guy and Freddy says he is attracted to Anna, not Catherine. This leads to some bad things happening to Catherine’s spells as Anna breaks them and then it also gets revealed that Freddy has been playing with both Anna’s and Catherine’s affections. Of course the Luminate members want to examine Anna and find out why she is capable of breaking spells. 

Anna’s life becomes much more complicated when her parents and grandmother decide that Anna will come with her grandmother to Hungry. This will take some heat off her family’s reputation being in ruined. Of course Freddy has decided to not have either of the two of them. As Anna is going to Hungary it’s a chance for a new beginning, but nothing is ever as simple for her as that.

When Anna arrives in Hungary her life takes a lot of twists and turns. She meets some interesting people. There are a lot of people who want change and revolution to happen. We learn a lot of things about the Luminate and how they have forced people not to have magic because of a circle or spell known as the binding. We also learn that the Luminate do not like the Gypsy’s or Romanies because they have a different kind of magic. Magic should be free for everybody.

The books take crazy twists as both Anna and her cousin are navigating things within their society. Anna finds out that she does have magic, but she is a chimera and that they never told her, because of how dangerous her magic is. At the binding Anna finds out that there is a real danger to breaking the circle because it could kill her. The magic to break the spell is blood magic. This is bad. Anna being a chimera means her magic both attracts and repels. This is why the Luminate never told her the truth. She is very dangerous.

There are decisions that are made. Anna has to wrestle with a lot. Plus she develops very strong feelings for Gabor. The romance was okay between the two of them. I thought it could have been developed a little bit more, but I understood that there was a bigger problem that these two individuals had to deal with. So maybe in the next book there will be a lot more passion from these two. I felt that it was a little forced. That was my only complaint with this book. 

Yet, when Anna breaks the binding the world as she knew it and the rest of Luminate society has changed in ways no one could forsee. Change is necessary at times. I like how everything is left in a state of flux. Anna’s life has become much more easier as she knows now what she is and can do. It will be interesting to see what happens next in this world.

Rating:

Four Hearts