Garden of Thorns by Amber Mitchell
Published: March 6th 2017 by Entangled Teen
After seven grueling years of captivity in the Garden—a burlesque troupe of slave girls—sixteen-year-old Rose finds an opportunity to escape during a performance for the emperor. But the hostage she randomly chose from the crowd to aid her isn’t one of the emperor’s men—not anymore. He’s the former heir to the throne, who is now leading a rebellion against it.
Rayce is a wanted man and dangerously charismatic, the worst person for Rose to get involved with, no matter what his smile promises. But he assumes Rose’s attempt to take him hostage is part of a plot to crush the rebellion, so he takes her as his hostage. Now Rose must prove where her loyalties lie, and she offers Rayce a deal—if he helps her rescue the other girls, she’ll tell him all the Garden’s secrets.
Except the one secret she’s kept for seven years that she’ll take to her grave if she must.
Note: I received an ARC of this via Netgalley. This in no way influences my opinion.
I had a lot of fun reading this book. I absolutely love the cover and, when I read the blurb, I knew I had to request it from Netgalley! I am so glad that I got accepted because I really enjoyed this!
Immediately we are thrown into this crazy world that Rose lives in. She is a prisoner of the Garden and she is forced to perform. From the very first page, we can see the kind of conditions she is forced to live in and it makes the reader just want to save her and wrap her up in bubble wrap so that she never has to go through it ever again. Her captivity definitely has an impact on her mentally that she struggles with throughout the entire book and it was interesting and satisfying to watch her grow as a person and watch her learn that not everyone is like the people in the Garden. She is extremely headstrong where it matters and I really like her.
The villains in the garden are people that readers just love to hate. They are really just terrible and easy to hate. There isn’t a redeemable factor about either the Gardener or Shears and I would really love to know what their back story is and how they ended up the way that the did. I would also love to know what happened to the guy who sold Rose out into captivity – what’s his story and where did he end up?
I really liked the people in the rebellion. I was actually pretty skeptical at first because they seemed a bit too good to be true? I was expecting some form of crazy plot twist where they were actually evil too… but it never came! I could see myself being friends with all of the people in the rebellion and I would have loved to get to know some of them more!
The only real issue I had with this book is the fact that it took Rose a little too long to start trusting people, even after they proved themselves time and time again. It became a little exhausting after a while and I just wanted to clip her around the ear so…
Can we just mention the ending? Obviously I don’t want to get into it too much, but it was so bittersweet! I was not expecting what happened and I was pretty upset when it did happen!
All in all, I really enjoyed myself reading this book and I am assuming there will be a sequel based on the ending? I am hoping so anyway! I gave this book 4/5 stars.
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