I really wanted to like Rose in Chains. The premise sounds great: a fallen princess, a magical war, an auction, enemies-to-lovers and a morally complicated love interest. Unfortunately, the actual book never really delivers on most of that.
My biggest problem was the pacing. For a 464-page book, surprisingly little actually happens. The story spends a huge amount of time going back and forth between Briony and Toven without giving their relationship enough development to justify how long it takes. It is supposed to be a slow burn, but after a while it just feels like nothing is happening. Other readers have made the same criticism, with one review describing the romance as painfully slow and suggesting the book could have lost around 100 pages.
The world-building also left me wanting more. There is a whole magical system, two kingdoms and a society built around magical slavery, but I never felt like I properly understood how any of it worked. The book introduces interesting ideas and then seems more interested in getting back to the romance.
And then there is Briony. I wanted to root for her, but some of her decisions made absolutely no sense to me. She is supposed to be intelligent and capable, yet she spends a lot of the book failing to notice things that seem extremely obvious. Even the romance suffers from this because so much of the tension depends on characters refusing to have conversations they obviously need to have.
The biggest issue is that Rose in Chains feels less like a complete first book and more like a very long introduction to books two and three. The ending leaves major questions open, which is normal for a trilogy, but I still wanted to feel like I had actually reached somewhere by the final page. Other readers have described it as feeling like an extended prologue, which honestly sums up my experience pretty well.
There are good ideas here, and I can see why the book has so many fans. But for me, the hype created expectations that the actual story couldn’t meet. I finished Rose in Chains more curious about what the sequel might finally do than satisfied with what I’d just read.
Rating: 2/5
