UptownOracle in Book Reviews

Uptown Oracle Reads… Violet Made of Thorns

Violet Made of Thorns by Gina Chen

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Violet is a prophet and a liar, influencing the royal court with her cleverly phrased—and not always true—divinations. Honesty is for suckers, like the oh-so-not charming Prince Cyrus, who plans to strip Violet of her official role once he’s crowned at the end of the summer—unless Violet does something about it.

But when the king asks her to falsely prophesy Cyrus’s love story for an upcoming ball, Violet awakens a dreaded curse, one that will end in either damnation or salvation for the kingdom—all depending on the prince’s choice of future bride. Violet faces her own choice: Seize an opportunity to gain control of her own destiny, no matter the cost, or give in to the ill-fated attraction that’s growing between her and Cyrus.

Violet’s wits may protect her in the cutthroat court, but they can’t change her fate. And as the boundary between hatred and love grows ever thinner with the prince, Violet must untangle a wicked web of deceit in order to save herself and the kingdom—or doom them all.

Violet Made of Thorns is a Beauty & the Beast Retelling with additional magic and many many symbolic roses throughout the story. This is definitely not a direct retelling, and a lot of additional twists and changes are made by Gina Chen throughout the book to make it all that more enthralling.

Our titular character Violet is in fact a bit thorny as she now has a high ranking position at court, lives in the tower, but that wasn’t always the case. Even though she’s become the Seer for her king, she was once a street urchin just fighting for survival every day. Her outlook on life is extremely pragmatic and a little bit cynical, where she makes the choices that are best for her but aren’t always “good”.

One annoyance I had with Violet’s characterisation was that sometimes her behaviour towards the prince was petty and a bit childish. Whilst the story tries to explain this, it’s kind of obvious that at some point he’s going to be the king and she would have to serve him with the same respect she has for the current one. So this doesn’t feel right as surely she’d be reprimanded repeatedly by the current king and other members of court.

This behaviour does lead into the main romance trope of the book though. The story has an “enemies” to lovers kinda romance plot line where they go from insulting and bickering to passionate sex within a few pages. The love/hate relationships continue for the majority of the book and if you’re into this trope you’ll likely enjoy this book.

Prince Cyrus and his sister Princess Camila are well written as royalty with Cyrus having the responsibilities of heir, whilst Camila parties and frolics and has her fun. Camila sometimes acted as a comic relief character, and was very blunt at pointing out things that Violet was too blinded to see on occasion.

There’s also Dante who is a side character, ward to the crown and best friend/advisor to Cyrus. As a character we don’t know much about him but everyone seems to love him, and I enjoyed his meddling with Violet and Cyrus throughout the story. I believe Violet Made of Thorns is the first in a duology so I’m hoping we get to see even more of Dante in book two as well as some insight into his background.

There’s a political plotline between kingdoms which is half-connected to our characters, but sometimes not really all that connected. I wish we did have more political intrigue and saw a bit more of the repercussions of that overall in the story (although I completely realise this isn’t what the book promises!).

There’s the Fairywood and Auveny is slowly taking more and more land from it. I wish we’d seen more of the magic, fairies and the Fairywood as a whole tbh. Whilst magic is a big part of the story, I wish we’d seen just a bit more magic and wonder in the world building.

As a whole I loved reading Violet Made of Thorns and it was a book I raced through during the hot summer days here in the UK.