Book Review: A Rose Among Thorns by Ash Fitzsimmons
Genre(s): Cozy Fantasy / Urban Fantasy
Book Synopsis:
No one said anything about an attack vine.
Rose Thorn should never be left unsupervised around plants. Potted things tend to die around her as if on principle. But when her great-aunt calls and asks Rose to watch her garden nursery for a few days, Rose can hardly say no. After all, Aunt Lily is the closest thing Rose has to a grandmother—and the only family she has left—so Rose doesn’t mind driving out to her tiny mountain town to look after the place.
Aunt Lily never mentioned anything about an inspection, however.
Rose is taken aback when an agent from an organization she’s never heard of arrives and panics to find Aunt Lily missing. As it turns out, Aunt Lily hasn’t been entirely straight with Rose. She’s not visiting a sick friend—she’s in danger and on the run. She keeps a hidden greenhouse on the property in which she grows highly regulated magical plants. And she’s an elf…as was Rose’s grandfather.
Though stunned to witness magic at work and shocked that no one ever divulged the family secret, Rose refuses to abandon the nursery until her great-aunt is safely home. But as she and the agent, now awkward housemates, try to keep up their cover story and find the missing grower, they realize that whatever led to Aunt Lily’s disappearance might not be the only magical crime in progress.
And while Rose has no green thumb, another talent of hers may be budding…
Review:
This was a book club pick, and probably one that I wouldn’t have chosen to read on my own, but I liked it! It was a really cute story.
Our main character is Rose, a mid-twenties artist who agrees to watch her aunt’s nursery while her aunt goes out of town to “visit a friend.” Rose is a terrible gardener, and as the synopsis suggests, she’s not prepared for an inspection to occur. She’s also not expecting the agent who arrives to be something other than human, and she never realized her aunt’s nursery is more than it appears. There are magical plants, some with minds of their own!
Which brings me to Sally. Sally is a slithertrap (a magical vine), who is particularly fond of Rose, but not so much of anyone else. As the story progresses, Sally becomes known as an “attack vine,” and for a plant, has quite the personality. (Where can I get one of these? Because an attack vine sounds awesome!)
While most of the story revolves around Rose and Yven (the agent) searching for her aunt and tending the plants in the nursery, there are a number of cozy scenes involving Yven baking and Rose’s artwork. I liked the unexpected friendship that sprung up between the two. (I suspect they’ll hook up later in the series, but at the end of this book, they’re just friends.)
During the course of their investigation, Rose and Yven uncover ties to other crimes which weren’t solved here, but were a perfect lead-in to the rest of the series. I liked this book and it was well-written, but I probably won’t read beyond this point. I was happy with how the story ended here.
Author website: ashfitzsimmons.com
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