BLOG TOUR: The Everlasting Rose

The Everlasting Rose
Rating: 3/5
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher 

Camellia Beaureguard is a Belle. She can make you beautiful. Though there is always a cost. With a price on her head, the evil Queen Sophia out for blood, and no idea who to trust, Camellia must race against time to find the ailing Princess Charlotte, who has disappeared without a trace. Sophia's imperial forces will stop at nothing to keep Camellia, her sister Edel, and her loyal guard, Remy, from returning Charlotte to the palace and her rightful place as queen. With the help of a secretive resistance movement called the Iron Ladies - a society that rejects beauty treatments entirely - and the backing of underground newspaper the Spider's Web, Camellia must use her powers, her connections, and her cunning to outwit her greatest nemesis, Sophia, and restore peace to Orleans. 

I really, really loved The Belles and it was one of my favourite books of 2018, so obviously I was excited for the sequel to see how it was all going to wrap up. Unfortunately, something about this sequel left me feeling a bit underwhelmed overall and I didn't love this as much as the previous book. 

We pick up with Camellia, Edel, Amber and Remy who are all searching for Charlotte, Edel shows Camellia a cool new aspect/way to use their power...glamour. I did love getting to explore that, it did have it's limitations which added a sense of tension whenever they used it. There's an underground newspaper and a resistance called The Iron Ladies who are kind of creepy, but that might be because of the spiders. Again, another new element to the story that I enjoyed and was excited to get to delve in to. There's tension because they're being hunted and are on the run. There's the threat of the Belle prison being created and the horrifying ways Sophia wants to use the Belles. My fave, Gustave, popped up again too! 

We got to see some more of the world of the book, which is another thing I was excited about as I was curious to see more of it. I really love how the world is all ostentatious and glamorous and all about beauty and the descriptions match that and paint some brilliantly vivid pictures, but then we have darker undertones in both books that show you that being beautiful isn't always what it's cracked up to be and it has a cost. I also liked how this one went darker with Camellia doing some things in the name of justice, and because of her anger that aren't what you'd call "heroic". She loses it a little bit and she makes things unpleasant for some characters and I loved seeing her twist BUT I'm not here for animal murder, okay. 

However, I was disappointed with Auguste when he popped up again. One of the things that had me losing my mind in The Belles was Auguste and his betrayal. I didn't see it coming. I was mind blown, and I was looking forward to seeing more of Evil Auguste in this book, but he reappears as a love interest again. Clayton appeared to be redeeming him, and going back on the betrayal from the previous book, and it just seemed a bit weak to me. Plus it was like he was being reintroduced as a love interest, after he betrayed her and she chose Remy!? It seemed like a weak stab at a love triangle in the last part of the book which is one of the reasons I was confused as to whether this was a final book or not. 

This felt, a lot of the time, like it was the middle of a trilogy and not the final book. I ended the book with a lot of questions and not feeling like everything had been settled. Some things did come to a satisfying conclusion but I had to look up whether this was actually a trilogy or not. I was also disappointed that after all the allusions to Camellia's mother, nothing more came of it. I was expecting there to be more to her mother, and it wasn't the only thing that was built up with a lot of mystery in the first book to kind of wither out in this book and come to nothing. 

The first part of the book was full of tension building, Camellia worrying about her sisters, and trying to get to Charlotte, avoid being captured and so on, and while there were a few points to spice it up and pique my interest I did find my interest wandering. The final part of the book seemed quite rushed to me, a lot of things suddenly happened at once, I felt like a few things happened mainly for the shock factor, the death of a teacup pet, what happened with Amber. Considering how Camellia and Edel kept arguing about Amber, I was waiting for something bigger with that, or for a bigger reveal than we got. One of the other reveals seemed quite out of place and trippy, to be honest, considering the genre of this and what genre it isn't. 

Overall, I was just underwhelmed with this one because for me it didn't have any of the mind blowing, shock plot twists that the previous book did. The beginning was a bit slow with the build up and everything happened in the final part of the book, some things that had been built up ended up fizzling out with no satisfying resolution. One of which being what happened with Sophia. I was waiting for the big showdown with she and Camellia but I ended up being hugely disappointed with how things went with Sophia, considering everything she'd done. Considering this was a finale, I expected a lot more, and I wasn't blown away as I had been with the previous book. 

Review: The Belles

The Belles
Rating: 5/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

Camellia Beauregard is a Belle. In the opulent world of Orléans, Belles are revered, for they control Beauty, and Beauty is a commodity coveted above all else. In Orléans, the people are born gray, they are born damned, and only with the help of a Belle and her talents can they transform and be made beautiful.

But it’s not enough for Camellia to be just a Belle. She wants to be the favorite—the Belle chosen by the Queen of Orléans to live in the royal palace, to tend to the royal family and their court, to be recognized as the most talented Belle in the land. But once Camellia and her Belle sisters arrive at court, it becomes clear that being the favorite is not everything she always dreamed it would be. Behind the gilded palace walls live dark secrets, and Camellia soon learns that the very essence of her existence is a lie—that her powers are far greater, and could be more dangerous, than she ever imagined. And when the queen asks Camellia to risk her own life and help the ailing princess by using Belle powers in unintended ways, Camellia now faces an impossible decision. 

With the future of Orléans and its people at stake, Camellia must decide—save herself and her sisters and the way of the Belles—or resuscitate the princess, risk her own life, and change the ways of her world forever. 

Guys...you need to read this book, it was freaking awesome! I wasn't entirely sure if it was a standalone or not but after the ending, there's no doubt and I'm excited for the next book...I need it like, yesterday! I also wasn't entirely sure what to expect from this book but it actually blew me away.  

The Belles is intriguing from the start and I found the descriptions to me vivid and bright. The settings all sound very beautiful and colourful and bright...but there's a darkness seeping in along with the feeling that something isn't quite right at the palace and the tea house and so on. It's literally like looking at a colourful, beautiful exterior and then scratching it a little bit and seeing the dank, dark underbelly. There's little tidbits dropped throughout that have you thinking "hang on a minute..." and giving you a sense of foreboding as you try to work out what's going on. Literally nothing is as it seems, situations...characters, none of it. 

I have to say, I really loved our MC, Camille, she was imaginative, and bored of being told what to do. She questions things and makes her own decisions....she's inquisitive and I loved her for it. She see's something's wrong and she doesn't just ignore it and go about her day, she investigates. Bree I really loved, I was a bit wary of her at first but it became clear she's loyal to Camille and I liked the relationship between the two. Camille and her sister Belles had a brilliant dynamic and relationship amongst them, even if Amber was being a brat a few times and I wasn't sure I liked her...I eventually warmed to her. I'd have loved to have seen some more of the relationship between all of them, but I'm hoping in the next book we get to see more of Amber and Edel and get to know them more!

Remy....I ship he and Camille so bad and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to but I was all set to dislike the grumpy pants....and then I just ended up loving him. Bless him, he tried so hard to try and be friendlier and you got to know more about him and it's impossible not to end up liking him. Although he does give you pause towards the end! As for Auguste....he's charming. Which made me suspicious from the start. I wanted to trust him, I really did, but I couldn't quite bring myself to because I always felt there was something slightly off about him. 

This book was somewhat of a hard read for me, as someone who's struggled with their appearance since I was a teenager, and often wished for the things in this book, you know...being able to effortlessly change how you appear and so on. This book shows what's wrong with that. It makes you question it. It makes you see that it wouldn't be a good thing, it shows you what could go wrong and Camille herself just wants people to love themselves and that's what she wants to achieve with her gift, it was actually a really lovely message for the book, if not a hard one to accept. 

It genuinely did not take me long to get fully sucked in to this book, there are so many snakes throughout I was never sure who could be trusted, and there's a completely psychotic Princess. Sorry not sorry, but she genuinely is a psycho. I'd say I love to hate her, but really I just hate her, she's awful. There where so many fun, imaginative little details thrown in, I have to say, it really let my imagination run wild as I pictured the world. The pace was good anyway but towards the end it really picked up and then plot twists get thrown at you one after the other and one event triggers others until the book finishes with a bang. Like seriously....I'm gonna be needing more and I'm gonna be impatient while I wait.