Bloodrose (Nightshade #3)
Andrea Cremer
Publish Date: January 3, 2012
ARC from Penguin (Philomel)
The Ultimate Sacrifice.
Calla has always welcomed war. But now that the final battle is upon her, there’s more at stake than fighting. There’s saving Ren, even if it incurs Shay’s wrath. There’s keeping Ansel safe, even if he’s been branded a traitor. There’s proving herself as the pack’s alpha, facing unnamable horrors, and ridding the world of the Keepers’ magic once and for all. And then there’s deciding what to do when the war ends. If Calla makes it out alive, that is.
In the final installment of the Nightshade trilogy, New York Times bestselling author Andrea Cremer creates a novel with twists and turns that will keep you on the edge of your seat until its final pages. A dynamic end to this breathtaking trilogy. –Goodreads
*Spoilers for Wolfsbane*Y’all. I’ve been trying to review this book for over a month. There was so much that I loved about it and so much that left me heartbroken and angry. I have such mixed feelings that I’m going to try to put it into words without sounding completely ridiculous.
Cremer goes into Bloodrose guns blazing – there is not a dull moment and from the start it is impossible to put down. Like I said in my review of Wolfsbane, I love Cremer’s world-building and story-telling. This book is full of so many twists and turns and so much drama and love and hurt. I LOVE where Cremer took the story with the Searchers and the Keepers. I love the adventures the characters have to go on to retrieve the rest of the sword for Shay so he can defeat the Keepers. Cremer does an amazing job of describing and each location the group goes to and each location is more dangerous than the one before. These parts were by far my favorite parts of the book. I loved the adventure and the suspense that Cremer creates during these parts.
The main love triangle between Calla, Shay, and Ren is still going strong – which I hate. I hate love triangles and I hated how Calla handled it in book two – but in Bloodrose we get the old Calla back. She’s determined to protect her remaining pack over everything else – something that a true alpha should be doing, right? – and the love triangle isn’t the prominent issue within the story. I actually love the other relationships in Bloodrose more than the Calla/Shay/Ren thing. Ansel and Bryn are two of my favorite characters and seeing them trying to work through things after all the hurt in Wolfsbane is interesting. I also love a a few of the other relationships that develop throughout the story – which I won’t talk about so I won’t spoil it.
My anger and heartbreak comes with the end of the book (typical, right?). There is just so much that happens that I didn’t see coming and that I’m not sure WHY it had to happen. And I have questions about the way other things happened… Bloodrose was such a roller coaster of emotions for me.
Overall, I really did love Bloodrose. The good outweighed the bad and the storytelling, worldbuilding, and emotional rollercoaster that Cremer takes the reader on is what a good book is all about. I might not like or agree with everything that happened but this was Cremer’s story to tell – and she told it amazingly well. I honestly can’t wait for the companion novel, Rift, and anything else Cremer writes.