Book Review | The Secret World of Briar Rose

I’ve watched Cindy’s channel for years. I adore her hilarious reviews, so I'm sad to say that her debut novel fell short of my expectations.

The Secret World of Briar Rose alternatives between two main timelines. We follow Amelia, the Sleeping Beauty-esque princess who is cursed to fall into an eternal slumber on her eighteenth birthday. On the other hand, there’s Corin, one hundred years in the future. She’s a jaded thief who falls into the princess’ dreams in search of her missing sister.

I ultimately think the book is so preoccupied with creating fantastical dreamscapes that the character writing, plot, and everything else falls to the wayside. For instance, Amelia and Malicine’s dynamics were like a watered-down version of the Maleficent movie without feeling earned.

I also wish the worldbuilding had been fleshed out more—like there’s no sense of culture or customs to Gyldan. The time period is also vaguely ambiguous. It’s odd to have a quasi-medieval castle setting and then one century later, bam! There's suddenly guns and metal detectors. That's a huge technological jump with little explanation.

As for the writing itself, the prose itself is simple. However, for fairytale retellings, I personally tend to gravitate toward a more lush, evocative writing style. For the descriptions that we do get, the figurative language was lackluster or ineffective.

For example, take this passage: “Blood slipped from the fringes and scattered into pieces. One fell in her palm like a snowflake, drying like a scab, before it dissolved.”

What is the point of comparing dried blood to a scab? Typically, similes are for two dissimilar things, so the comparison felt strangely superfluous here.

All in all, this was a disappointment, and I wish the contents of the story had been as gorgeous as the cover.

Thank you, Penguin Young Readers and NetGalley, for providing me with an ARC.