Book Review: RoseBlood

About the Book:
Title: RoseBlood
Author: A.G. Howard
Pub. Date: January 10, 2017
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
Pages: 432
Rating:  2/5 stars

Synopsis:

In this modern day spin on Leroux’s gothic tale of unrequited love turned to madness, seventeen-year-old Rune Germain has a mysterious affliction linked to her operatic talent, and a horrifying mistake she’s trying to hide. Hoping creative direction will help her, Rune’s mother sends her to a French arts conservatory for her senior year, located in an opera house rumored to have ties to The Phantom of the Opera. 

At RoseBlood, Rune secretly befriends the masked Thorn—an elusive violinist who not only guides her musical transformation through dreams that seem more real than reality itself, but somehow knows who she is behind her own masks. As the two discover an otherworldly connection and a soul-deep romance blossoms, Thorn’s dark agenda comes to light and he’s forced to make a deadly choice: lead Rune to her destruction, or face the wrath of the phantom who has haunted the opera house for a century, and is the only father he’s ever known.

Review:

It kills me to write this review, and for awhile I wasn't going to. I was just going to let my rating speak for myself. Because here's the thing, I love A.G. Howard. I have loved all the books she has written thus far, and I am always captivated by her gorgeous prose. But this book? This book was an invariable mess and I don't even know what I read. I tried with this novel, I mean I really tried. I stopped reading it for a bit because I thought, "Maybe I'm just in a bad mood."So I restarted it a couple days later when I was really in the mood to be reading a dark twisted tale on Phantom of the Opera. But was that time successful? Nope! It just got worse. Let me tell you, the only reason I didn't DNF it was because of my loyalty to this author, and it was my loyalty alone that kept me trudging through this overwritten story. I'm sure plenty of people will love this book, but this was a huge miss for me and it definitely broke my heart a bit.

I don't even know where to start with this because there is just so much wrong. So let's start with the writing shall we? It's overwritten, bloated story that is filled with description upon description that makes even the smallest detail become a huge thing. Like I can't even tell you how many times the word gothic was used in this story because it was probably at least used 6 times on each page. And if you didn't notice, this book is a whopping 432 pages. That's a lot of "gothic's". On top of that every single thing is described very richly. Normally, I wouldn't mind this, but when it takes you about 10 pages to describe a single scene...that's going just a tiny bit overboard, don't ya think? I mean by page 300, I could care less what the rug in the bathroom off the main entrance looks like because I'm sure it's just as gothic as the rest of the gothic furniture in the gothic opera house/school that Rune attends, which is (if you couldn't tell) super gothic-y in all it's wondrous gothic gothic-ness. 

I mean at one point I was just straight up laughing at how detailed this story was. Why you ask? Well, it would be one thing if these descriptions were normal people descriptions, but that certainly wasn't what this was. The descriptions in this book look like the author decided to use every single imaginable word in a thesaurus and just spit them out on the page. And that obviously makes for some very weird and very bizarre sentences. Honestly, you could open this book to any page and be weirded out by a sentence. And there are way too many examples to even list. 

Rune (our MC) is just mind-numbingly boring. Obviously she's gorgeous (but doesn't know it!), and is super special for some unbeknownst reason. I never once connected with her, and when her life was repeatedly in danger (as it always is in these types of books), I couldn't bring myself to care even the tiniest bit. She's honestly nothing special in my eyes, and is like every other dew-eyed heroine out there. Rune has special abilities (shocking, I know...who would have thought?), and even more shockingly, she is the key to everything . Bet you didn't see that coming, because I sure didn't. Nope, not in any way. I honestly can't tell you anything about her because she is that forgettable. And that makes me really sad because Ms. Howard usually writes such amazing characters. Now I have to move onto the unfortunate love interest...Thorn. A quick side note, he's also equally as gorgeous as Rune, and even though he hides himself behind a mask and has lived in the sewer (every girl's dream right?) in France for his entire life, Rune feels like she knows him. Moreover, when they finally meet, she's swept away instantly because he just knows and understands Rune like no one else. 

Personally, he was Creepy McCreepster in my eyes and I literally had to suppress the shivers any time he opened his mouth. I honestly wanted to shake Rune and tell her, "Honey, if someone is spying on you through the vents, watches you sleep because he's calmed by your breathing, and has dreamed of you since you were 6 (which obviously makes you soul mates because duh!), maybe you should rethink the whole love thing." Just a thought. I mean maybe that's just me, and because I'm not singing and living in a gothic opera house I will never understand true love and soul mates. But I digress. 

I will say that I did think the author did give a unique and creative spin on the original Phantom of the Opera story, but I have a hard time thinking whether it was a good creative or a bad creative. Because there was a lot of times (and I mean A LOT of times) where I was just lost as to what was happening and why I was even reading this book. I mean I lost it when the Opera Ghost signed his initials O.G. because literally all I was thinking was "Original Gangster" and me imagining Erik as some hip hop wannabe chilling under the sewers waiting for his time to shine in baggy pants and chains around his neck. And just for good measure (since this book obviously wasn't weird enough), Jepetto was thrown in because why the heck not? I mean at that point, he wasn't even close to the weirdest thing in this book, so I just kinda went with it. 

This entire book was sad to read because this could have been utterly fantastic! I have been waiting for a good creative retelling of Phantom of the Opera and I thought that A.G. Howard would have been the perfect person to achieve this. But I was sorely mistaken, and was left very very disappointed. If you can't tell, I could never, in good conscience, recommend this book when the only good thing about it is the stunning cover.

Happy reading :)

~Cassie