The Dark Rose: A Novel [Hardcover]

Monday, March 19, 2012

The Dark Rose: A Novel [Hardcover]

Product Details

Reading level: Ages 18 and up
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books (February 2, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0670023280
ISBN-13: 978-0670023288
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

By : Erin Kelly
Price : $17.23
You Save : $9.72 (36%)

Customer Reviews

Journalist Erin Kelly catapulted to literary heights in 2011 with THE POISON TREE, a dark tale of secrecy and family protection. Originally released in the UK as THE SICK ROSE, her second stand-alone is a complex drama of love and love betrayed. Appropriately promoted as sophisticated psychological suspense, THE DARK ROSE rockets Kelly's career into the stratosphere.
Like a butterfly flitting between 1989 and 2009, the tale of teen Louisa Trevelyan's obsessive love of Adam Glasslake takes a tragic turn, and Louisa goes on the lam. The crumbling Kelstice Lodge estate was purchased "with a view to restoring the garden to its Elizabethan glory," Louisa's secret garden --- or, rather, garden of secrets. Now at age 39, Louisa chooses Kelstice not for love of landscape but for the remote location. Petty criminal Paul, who is 20 years younger, is in a witness protection program. He is situated there for the same reason, and to work in community service.
Paul is Adam's doppelgänger, and it's time for his "vagrant soul to find new flesh." Memories of Adam "nibbled like fleas in the bedclothes at night," and Louisa uses Paul to fill the love void. "Her three months with Adam remained the longest relationship of her life." But Louisa adjusts to sharing her life and bed with someone half her age. In youthful exuberance, Paul jumps over a wall and breaks a rambling rose, dooming it to the compost heap. He pledges to replant another.
In obvious reference to Louisa's attempt to use Paul as a surrogate to regrow her love with Adam, readers learn: "When a new rose is planted on the same spot as an old one, you get a sick rose; it doesn't bloom, and it'll probably die. You can't expect something that beautiful to bloom twice."
Kelly masterfully orchestrates character conceit and arrogance to draw in readers with the tension of a violin string. With more turns than race car wheels on a twisting track, dramatic events blossom to reveal a shocking conclusion. Kelly's keyboard is a Stradivarius and she a literary virtuoso.
Reviewed by L. Dean Murphy

"Louisa Trevelyan. It's like an incredibly short poem, or a prayer. It's very beautiful" "Louisa Trevelyan...It was like a very beautiful, very short poem, or a prayer." These two comments, by Adam Glasslake, Louisa's lover in Erin Kelly's character-driven, neo-Gothic suspense novel "The Dark Rose", bookend Louisa's tragic obsession with Adam, an obsession fated to violence.
Having loved Kelly's previous novel "The Poison Tree", I was eager to read "The Dark Rose", and imported the British hardcover version, "The Sick Rose" in 2011 prior to its 2012 US release.
In "The Dark Rose", Kelly duplicates the original writing style that made "The Poison Tree" so unforgettable. Rather than pushing you along, "The Dark Rose" pulls you in as you follow the colission course between its two main characters, both with blood in their pasts and secrets to conceal; Louisa, a woman now in her late 30s, and the 19-year-old Paul. Try though they will to escape their blood-stained pasts, Paul and Louisa's future will, seemingly-inevitably, shed even more. You will want to tell them "Stop" to save Paul and Louisa from their inexorable fates.
In "The Dark Rose", as in "The Poison Tree", Kelly employs her unique and considerable talents to create complex, doomed characters. The pacing, the structure, and clever turns of phrase that made "The Poison Tree" so gripping are duplicated here.
Kelly is one of those authors whose books hold up - or even improve - with susequent readings. Read "The Dark Rose" the first time to find out what happens. Then read it again to enjoy how it did.
Five stars.
Chris Bennett