Review - Bloodrose (Nightshade, Book 3) by Andrea Cremer (4.5/5 stars)

Reading level: Young Adult
Genre: Paranormal
Size: 416 pages
Publisher: Philomel
Release Date: January 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-0399256127
Stand Alone or Series: Book 3 in the Nightshade series
Source: Borrowed from Library
Rating: 4.5/5 stars

This is the final book in the Nightshade trilogy by Cremer. She will be writing a prequel series of which the first book is called Rift, right now this is scheduled for release in August 2012. I thought this book was an excellent conclusion to this series; I loved the ending and thought it was such an appropriate and creative way to end the series.

The search for the Scion's weapons is on. Calla, Shay, and Ren...along with the other Searchers and Guardians are on a quest to find the two swords that Shay needs to confront the Keepers. Then following that will be the epic battle to save the world from the Keepers' evil magic. Oh, and of course, there is a lot of boy drama between Calla, Shay, and Ren.

I absolutely love Cremer's writing style, I can't quite pinpoint what it is that draws me into these books...but they are just so readable and engaging to me. I think part of it is the absolutely natural sounding and witty banter between the characters; it is so fun to read and so well done.

I have a hard time saying that I really admire any characters in this book; they all do some really stupid things. For the first part of the book Calla was kind of...well...skanky. She made out with Ren, made out with Shay, made out with Ren some more...I had some trouble with this and had to roll my eyes at all of her drama. The way she strung those boys along was criminal...all supposedly for the good of the fight. But, Calla has never been a favorite of mine and I admit she had some truly tough decisions to make. So, despite her indecisiveness and skankiness I can turn a blind eye. At times the teen drama got to be a bit much for me, but it never went too overboard.

What really blew me away was the plot and the complex world. I loved that this book had a heavy fantasy-type questing element to it. The group had to adventure through caves and traps to obtain the Scion's swords and it was incredibly well written and amazing to read about. The complexity of how the battle came together was also very interesting to read about and incredibly well done; it never got confusing or hard to follow despite the multitude of characters involved. It takes a great writer to make something that complex easy to follow.

The other thing I absolutely loved was the ending. I won't say much about it, but I thought it fit beautifully with the tone of the story and was so happy that it was something different (and not something typical of a lot of the YA paranormal books out there). This was just such a well thought out and well put together series.

Overall I really enjoyed this conclusion to the Nightshade series. It was surprising, complex, and very well put together. I enjoyed the complex world, the quest-like adventuring the characters went through, and the wonderful action scenes. I could have done without Calla's indecisiveness but I accept that that is a necessary evil of most of these YA paranormal books. I am curious as to what Cremer will come up with next in her prequel series, Rift.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
- Horror and Urban Fantasy Challenge
- 150+ Books Reading Challenge