3.5
Winter Rose
ByPublisher Description
Sorrow and trouble and bitterness will hound you and yours and the children of yours…
Some said the dying words of Nial Lynn, murdered by his own son, were a wicked curse. To others, it was a winter’s tale spun by firelight on cold, dark nights. But when Corbet Lynn came to rebuild his family estate, memories of his grandfather’s curse were rekindled by young and old--and rumors filled the heavy air of summer. In the woods that border Lynn Hall, free-spirited Rois Melior roams wild and barefooted. And as autumn gold fades, she is consumed with Corbet Lynn, obsessed with his secret past…
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesWinter Rose Reviews
3.5
“magnificent writing, unique story, took me right into the heart of winter and was the best companion to two of the hardest weeks of my life. i ordered the author‘s trilogy and am looking forward to reading much more of her work. this is fantasy that i like: no kingdom, no war, no battles, just…story. i recommend this author and this book whole heartedly.”“ever as always, patricia mckillip’s writing is beautiful, her dreamlike prose flowing with elegance. but here, the purple prose overwhelms the narrative.
mckillip's hallucinogenic imagery is so hazy and abstract that it becomes difficult to understand what’s actually happening. dreams blur into reality, so it's hard to tell what is real or not, when the heroine always stirs from sleep only to fall into another daydream, as if she was enchanted to dream an endless dream.
because of this, the characters feel distant, i couldn't tell if our heroine, Rois, is a human or not when she was barely human herself whenever she wanders from two different worlds. and Corbet, the supposed love interest, is confusing...he feels like one of those men from endless situationships.
it’s hard to tell whether the real Corbet is truly in love with Rois. one moment, he seems captivated by her, the next, we see him exchanging gooey-eyes with her sister, Laurel—who, by the way, is already engaged to another man, yet still has the audacity to flirt with Corbet right in front of her fiancé, all while fully aware that Rois is in love with him too.
the romance was such a confusing mess that it genuinely frustrated me. i couldn't tell if Corbet was bewitched or not, or is their a fey disguising as him, and the real Corbet was locked somewhere in the woods because he was suddenly indifferent to Rois. by the end, i just wasn’t convinced of the love story, the love triangle wasn't really wrapped well. there wasn’t a single moment of genuine romance shared between Corbet and Rois.
Winter Rose felt like it was more about Corbet and Laurel's emotional cheating.
i absolutely loathe Laurel. she dismisses Rois as “wild” and tries to steal the attention of the man her sister likes—even while engaged to Perrin! Perrin works tirelessly for their future, builts a house, writes poetry, and helps her family to do hard labor, all while unaware that Laurel’s heart is with Corbet. worst of all, when Corbet disappeared, she even asked Perrin to go look for him. and Perrin while heartbroken will do anything for her—even chase the man who replaced him—out of love. Laurel is so shameless, and I’m frustrated she dominates so much of the story!!
Winter Rose is a fantasy romance, but there is hardly anything romantic about it. i’m not convinced of Corbet and Rois. obsessive love is not appealing, especially if it's the woman who does all of the chasing to a bland man who doesn't even deserve it. sad to say, this is the first patricia mckillip that didn't work for me, and i wouldn't recommend it.
the best place to start with her works remains 'The Changeling Sea' or the award-winning 'The Forgotten Beasts of Eld', where her lyrical, dreamlike storytelling doesn't outshine the plot, and the characters are more likeable.”
“beautiful and dreamy and breaking my heart, at times hard to follow but in a way thats the charm of it, i enjoyed piecing it together as i went along by myself and the language is so lyrical there are metaphors in this book that have never even been thought of before well done patricia u rock and u roll”
“a fantasy novel that retells the Scottish folk ballad of "Tam Lin," focusing on a young, free-spirited woman named Rois who must save a man from a generations-long fey curse. The story explores themes of human love versus inhuman need, desire, and the power of the past to shape the present.
Half of the time i am trying to make sense of whats written in every sentence. Sometimes i felt iam reading a Book written by someone high on drugs or badly translated to english. They said its lyrical poetic language but this is too lyrical for me to understand what in the world happening.
As a child ive loved reading the TamLin legend. Here it had become extra dramatic. First 10 chapters were interesting. While rest i felt like reading gibberish. The story is interesting but the language made it hard to understand whats happening.”
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