One Cursed Rose by Rebecca Zanetti (Bibliolifestyle Book Tour)

 

Do you have a favorite fairy tale?

One of my favorite fairy tales is Beauty and the Beast.  I was excited to see that One Cursed Rose was a dark romance rewrite of the Beauty and the Beast Fairy Tale.

Alana Beaumont is a young twenty something social media influencer.  She is the heir to Aquarius Social, which is one of the four major social medial companies.  The four families that own the four main social medial companies have been rivals for centuries.  They gain power from different gems or crystals that are specific to a family, and they use this power to run their social media networks.  Thron Beathach is the owner of the current number one company, Mafia Media.  He is obsessed with Alana and he saves/kidnaps her during an assassination attempt.  Why is someone trying to murder to Alana and is it related to her brother’s mysterious death?  Who is working against Thorne and freezing his gems?

My thoughts on this novel:

·       I loved that this was a Beauty and the Beast retelling and that is what first caught my attention.

·       One Cursed Rose was an engaging and very readable story.

·       This is a dark mafia romantic suspense fantasy novel.

·       I really enjoyed the mysteries and the suspense in this novel and that is what kept me reading and unable to put the book down.

·       I enjoyed that this was a dual narrative novel with Alana and Thorne telling the story in alternate chapters.

·       One Cursed Rose is the first in a new series.

·       I liked the secondary characters.  Alana’s friends, Thorne’s brother, etc. were all great.  I wanted to know all their background stories and I’m hoping that they will get their stories as the series progresses.

·       Alana came off as a spoiled rich kid at first, but she is smart and has depth.  I liked her.  Thorn is morally gray.  He is sexy, knows his own mind, and does like to help people.  But he also kills people and stalks Alana.  There is great banter between the two.

·       I would have liked more description of how exactly the crystals worked.

·       This was the first dark romance that I’ve read, and I am not sure about the “dark” elements.  Are all dark romances all like this novel and very spicy and violent?  Or is this extreme kink?  I didn’t like that the heroine was an inexperienced virgin with the families talking about her virginity and her getting tested before an arranged marriage to ensure her purity.  This did not seem like something that would be happening in 2024. The sexually experienced hero basically rapes her, beats her, threatens her, and does whatever he wants.  But it’s okay because she eventually enjoys it?  SPOILER ALERT:  Thorne puts a knife in Alana’s vagina and also beats her with a belt on her clitoris while she cries and begs him to stop.  This was too far for me and quite frankly, horrifying. SPOILER END. It reminded me of the 1970s and 1980s romances with this type of thing.  I was not a fan of the very graphic and long descriptions in the violent sex scenes as the novel went on. I ended up skimming these chapters. 

Overall, The Cursed Rose was a very engaging story, but I had to skim through the graphic sex scenes.