Everywhere I look online, readers are raving about Rose in Chains by Julie Soto. The sprayed edges, the violet cover, the darkly romantic premise—it all screams “must-read romantasy.” But here’s the thing: sometimes hype sets expectations a little too high. While I appreciated the lush design details and moments of solidarity between women, the story itself left me conflicted. In this review, I’m breaking down what worked, what fell flat, and why this buzzy romantasy might not live up to its glittering reputation.

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The Cover

The cover of Rose in Chains drew my eye. The bold violet color and sprayed edges look rich and inviting. The illustration is lovely. Type ties the whole thing together. This volume is clearly made for display.

Interior

The interior of Rose in Chains correlates nicely with the cover. Chapter headings bear a circle with floral ornamentation that takes up about 1/3 of the page providing a nice break. Part divisions are similarly ornamental. The typesetting is appropriate in size and margin. Overall layout enhances the reading experience.

Did the design affect whether I bought the book?

I was given this book as a birthday gift, but the gifter had seen me pick it up in a bookstore and say “oh, this is pretty” and read the back. So the cover design did impact my owning this edition of Rose in Chains.

Rose in Chains is told from the perspective of Briony, the female main character (FMC) who, despite being 24 years old, magically powerful, a princess, and well-educated, is painfully naive. She has had an enduring crush on Toven, the male main character (MMC), for years. While she continually paints him as her nemesis, he shows care for her repeatedly and to great personal expense. Throughout the book, men get divided into two camps: slimy would-be rapists or boring, safe guys who no one is interested in. Except for Toven and his father, who the FMC just can’t figure out. The women are shown in more color and with more depth and nuance. Generally, they all exhibit solidarity from their various places of repression. One exception is Mallow, our baddie, who is not shown very much but is categorized as ruthless and evil.

The language is approachable, the pace steady. For the kind of book it is, I expected more build-up to a climactic event. Events that should have built emotion and anticipation fell flat.

Rose in Chains is written in first person and relies on Briony’s point of view to inform the reader. This leaves lots of room for her to be an unreliable narrator or to frustrate the reader with her own inability to read subtext in her own observations.

Soto explores dynamics between sex and power in an up-front and in your face way in Rose in Chains (check the trigger warnings). Mind vs Heart is presented as a literal war in an unsubtle metaphor. Oppression of groups determined to be “other.” Tyrannical authoritarian regimes. Manipulation and control.

Very little happens in the plot of Rose in Chains, focusing more prominently on setting up characters and world-building. Relying on a single point of view (POV), this wide cast of characters contributes more toward creating a sense of confusion than setting up an epic filled with intrigue. For a story about war and freedom, the stakes feel very low and entirely tied to the state of our FMCs virtue. While the reader gets to know a bit about the main characters and their history, there is no character development. The characters do not grow or change or have any epiphany in all 444 pages.

A series starter that cannot stand alone as a story is a huge pet peeve of mine. If a first book needs the second to reach some natural conclusion (even while building interest in a second story), then it is not a book – it’s a very lengthy prologue.

I’m sensitive to repeated phrases and how they either enhance or detract from prose. For a portion of the book, the FMC describes a person whose name she doesn’t know as “strawberry-blonde” and then refers back to her repeatedly as “the strawberry-blonde,” and for some unknown reason, this annoyed me.

I did like the solidarity of the women in captivity, the subversive plotting of the oppressed. I liked it when people who disliked the FMC helped her anyway because they believed it was the right thing to do.

Rose in Chains was just okay for me. I’m not sure whether or not I will continue reading the series.

If you are a patient reader who can slog through a first book to get to a story, then this might be for you. It is fully a Romantasy where the love story takes precedence over the fantasy story.

*Check the trigger warnings on the first page of Rose in Chains – it’s a list.

This is a very popular book on social media this year. Have you read it? Did your take match mine? Tell me in the comments!

May your life be as full as your bookshelf and as long as your TBR list.

Happy Reading!