Queen of Roses

Briar Boleyn

SPOILER ALERT

I received this as an ARC, and I’m really glad I did because this ended up being such a fun and unexpected take on a familiar story.

Queen of Roses is a different take on the traditional King Arthur and Camelot, told from his sister Morgan’s point of view. Going into it, I wasn’t sure how much it would lean on the original story, but it ended up balancing familiarity and originality really well.

I enjoyed how fast-paced it felt. Since most people already know the basics of Camelot, there wasn’t a heavy need for long world-building in the beginning. But once the fae elements started to come in, the world expanded in a way that was easy to follow and visualize.

Arthur completely caught me off guard. I was NOT expecting him to be written the way he was. Paranoid, power hungry, and unable to trust even the people closest to him. It added a darker layer to the story that I wasn’t expecting.

Morgan, on the other hand, is strong in a very different way. After everything she went through with her parents, it would have been easy for her to break or run. But instead, she used it to protect the people she loved, even when it didn’t turn out the way she hoped.

As the story goes on and she starts learning more about who she is, everything begins to shift. What she believed, what she was told, and what she thought she understood all start to unravel.

And then the ending.

Finding out her traveling companion isn’t who we thought he was completely changed everything.

I immediately needed the next book.