Title: The Rose Master
Author: Valentina Cano
Page count: ebook, 200 pages
Publishing date: June 2014
Publisher: REUTS Publications, LLC
My rating: 2/5 stars!
Blurb:
The day Anne Tinning turns seventeen, birds fall from the sky. But that's hardly the most upsetting news. She's being dismissed from the home she's served at since she was a child, and shipped off to become the newly hired parlor maid for a place she's never heard of. And when she sees the run-down, isolated house, she instantly knows why:
There's something wrong with Rosewood Manor.
Staffed with only three other servants, all gripped by icy silence and inexplicable bruises, and inhabited by a young master who is as cold as the place itself, the house is shrouded in neglect and thick with fear. Her questions are met with hushed whispers, and she soon finds herself alone in the empty halls, left to tidy and clean rooms no one visits.
As the feeling of being watched grows, she begins to realize there is something else in the house with them--some creature that stalks the frozen halls and claws at her door. A creature that seems intent on harming her.
When a fire leaves Anne trapped in the manor with its Master, she finally demands to know why. But as she forces the truth about what haunts the grounds from Lord Grey, she learns secrets she isn't prepared for. The creature is very real, and she's the only one who can help him stop it.
Now, Anne must either risk her life for the young man she's grown to admire, or abandon her post while she still can.
Anne's in a bind. She's has no options but to move to Rosewood Manor. She's leaving behind her friends and the people that brought her up. Everything she's known is about to change. Does she have any idea who the Master is at Rosewood Manor? Not at all. She has no clue what to expect, but what she finds at Rosewood Manor shocks her to the very core.
Rosewood Manor is absolutely breathtaking. With all of the red flowers surrounding the estate, it's hard to think that Anne could be making a mistake by leaving behind her old life to start a new one here, right?
Wrong.
It doesn't take long for Anne to realize that something is off with the entire manor. The caretakers are odd, skirting around the manor as if something is breathing down their necks constantly. And the Master? He's mysterious, barely leaving his room except to eat on occasion. He hasn't left Rosewood Manor in years, spending his time locked behind closed doors doing God knows what. And when Anne does meet Lord Grey, it's obvious that there's something wrong happening in this house, maybe even deadly.
The creature is watching them. The creature wants them dead.
The premise of this story is downright awesome. I like the creepy vibe to it. This is a dark story filled with violence, blood, and magic. As I'm not a fan of horror books, I didn't think that I would like this. But upon reading a couple of chapters, I realized that this isn't horror at all. It's more suspense with a lot of magic. That's really all. If you're looking for a horror story, this isn't for you (unless you get scared really easily).
I liked Rosewood Manor. It's creepy and odd, but at the same time it's really beautiful. In a dark sort of way, of course. I liked how it could be beautiful one moment and horrifying the next. As the characters spend most of their time at Rosewood Manor, it's really important that you like it. Otherwise you're going to be very bored with the lack of setting changes.
The characters:
Anne: She's the main character of this story- the maidservant; poor, loyal, and proper. In other words, she's rather bland. While I like her loyalty to other characters and her job, everything else about her is really really boring. She has no depth to her, no personality. I couldn't find myself to care what happened to her. If she was scared, she didn't really show it. If she was mad, she didn't show it. If she was upset, SHE DIDN'T REALLY SHOW IT. Maybe she was trying to be all prim and proper as women should be back in those days, but I just couldn't see it.
Workers at Rosewood Manor: Honestly, these people didn't really matter much. As the reader only gets to know a couple characters in the story, I felt like this was a bad thing. Only having two important characters overall is not a good thing. The workers- I can't even remember their names because they were so unimportant- were not beneficial to the story at all. The story line could have went along just fine if they were deleted out altogether.
Lord Grey: He's the other main character for this story. Odd, quirky, and a little bit on the eccentric side, he's quite the character. His personality is hard to describe; he's sort of a bunch of different qualities meshed together into one being. While this might seen pretty cool, it wasn't. He sort of seemed like he had multiple personality disorder, which would have been great if that's what the author was going for but I don't think that's the case. I want to say that I liked him just a little bit, but I'm not sure. I really don't know how I feel about him.
The creature: For the creature to be a huge part of the story, it should have been in the story a lot more. Sure, the reader gets some glimpses of it. Sure, it might cause some chaos every once in a while. But is it really that important? It SHOULD have been- the plot calls for it-but it wasn't that important really. The plot is supposed to be centered around this terrible creature and yet the reader doesn't get to see it that much. It was kind of disappointing. I wanted a creature, a monster, to run rampant through the manor, cutting up servants left and right, basking in blood... you know, doing monster-y things. But because it didn't have many scenes, it wasn't even that scary... which brings me back to saying that this is more of a suspense than horror.
The romance:
It was odd. It was not swoon-worthy. It seemed to happen all of a sudden. One moment Anne thinks Lord Grey is the weirdest and rudest man on the face of the planet and the next moment she's saying she's in love with him! I can't relate to this kind of romance. If you've read my reviews on Goodreads or any of my reviews on this blog, you know this. I just can't deal with a love that isn't true. Because, let's face it, this was more of an infatuation than love. Which brings me to this scene that annoyed me in the book SO MUCH... there is something that Lord Grey has kept hidden from Anne regarding a certain female friend. Anne finds out about this certain thing (and it's not a thing for Lord Grey to be proud of) and yet she shrugs it off, saying that Lord Grey isn't like that... blah blah blah. It just goes to show that's more of infatuation due to the fact that Anne barely knows Lord Grey AND he lied to her about something really important. But, whatever. Anne, if you wanna be stupid, be my guest.
Overall thoughts:
I just didn't care too much for this title. I liked Rosewood Manor, I liked the creature (when it was actually in the book), and I liked the magic part to it, even if it wasn't that much. I didn't like the characters, the romance, or the fact that the creature wasn't even really in the book despite it being the center for the plot. But, hey, the author did try. So that's a start.
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