The Verdant Cage by Jess Lourey Review

The Wall was built to keep them safe. Or so they thought.
 

For as long as seventeen-year-old apothecary Rose Allgood can remember, the towering stone Wall surrounding Noah's Valley has protected her people. No one leaves. No one fights. And no one questions why.
 

But their paradise has been hiding its thorns. When Rose's mother becomes the Valley's first murder victim and her twin brother is swiftly condemned, she alone is searching for the real killer. Determined to find the truth, she follows a trail of hidden messages, forbidden knowledge, and whispers of a past no one dares to remember.
 

The deeper she digs, the more certain Rose becomes that her mother's death was no accident. That the Wall isn't just keeping something out.
 

It's keeping something in.

This review is based on a complimentary Advanced Reader Copy provided by Entangled: Mayhem Books.

Like a flashback to the highs of the dystopian trend of the 2010’s, The Verdant Cage is an expertly crafted start to an utterly compelling new YA series. Taking the best elements of past dystopian works modernized and fused with fresh and green ideas, Jess Lourey takes the reader on a thrilling murder mystery story set within a lush valley surrounded by a foreboding and immense ancient wall. Featuring excellent plotting, great pacing, well-written and appealing characters, The Verdant Cage is a book that understands the assignment, delivering a satisfying and pitch perfect YA dystopian reading experience and an ending that leaves you eager for more!

Born into the apothecary house, Rose Allgood has trained extensively in the art of healing, medicine, and caregiving. Living in the pleasant and rural Noah’s Valley, the village and surrounding forest are protected by staggering ancient walls built over a hundred years ago to protect them from the dangerous beasts and unknown threats outside. Warned to keep a low profile and abiding by the laws of the village, Rose has lived her whole life responsibly following the rules and what’s expected of her, even an assigned marriage to her once childhood best friend now turned stranger Gryphon Tzu. Her entire world is suddenly thrown into uncertain chaos when her mother is found murdered and her twin brother Jonas is blamed and exiled to death, all on her planned wedding day. While under the oppressive and controlling restrictions of her soon to be in-laws, Rose attempts her own investigation not only to clear Jonas’s name, but to protect the village from the murderer in their midst. Yet the killer isn’t the only dangerous threat out there as the village lives in fear of a lethal disease called the Vex that the apothecaries can’t cure as well as further mysterious deaths occurring near the ancient walls.

With its hallmark giant and protective walls and mysterious laws revolving around a cult-like ascensions to the gods, The Verdant Cage‘s premise and concepts alone are interesting from the get-go. One of Lourey’s greatest accomplishments with this book is the way it’s carefully crafted to be a seamless experience, effortlessly balancing its character development, appropriate world-building, and plot while keeping the story engaging to read. Between the intrigue behind Noah’s Valley’s creation, the source of the Vex disease, Rose’s mother’s murder, and the subsequent deaths in the forests, The Verdant Cage has no shortage of compelling storylines that are all intertwined.

One of the first aspects of the book I noticed was how appropriate its structure and presentation is for YA readership, first and foremost telling an exciting story that’s exciting, a point that sometimes gets lost in dystopian novels that focus too much on the overt dehumanized discussions or harsh environment. The book consistently has a great sense of engagement, perfectly placing important plot twists or developments right where they should be for maximum impact. Chapters are also kept relatively short and to the point, the story having very little unnecessary filler and its four hundred pages being pure mystery thriller dystopian material heightened with light post-apocalyptic scifi and botanical horror flavor. From start to finish, The Verdant Cage is very satisfying to read and cleverly twisty; its ending surprising even myself as a regular epic SFF reader accustomed to complex narratives.

Per the dystopian genre, The Verdant Cage explores a variety of prominent themes associated with individuality, self-determination, sacrifice for the greater good, and speaking up despite the risks instead of turning a blind eye to injustice. While the themes themselves are fairly typical for a dystopian story, I found Lourey’s exploration and incorporation of them to be expertly utilized for moments of character growth and inspiration. One of my common pet peeves with dystopian stories is where the narrative inadvertently comes off as preachy or takes over the reading experience. Rose’s slow journey from a safe and quiet law-abiding villager to one that questions the norm and dares to have thoughts of heresy is handled well, particularly thanks to Rose’s intellectual character logic vs the more common emotionally-driven type of character; though that’s not to say Rose’s pain and loss of those around her isn’t dramatic, far from it. As Rose’s once idyllic impression of Noah’s Valley is shattered and the familiar becomes dangerous, both Rose and the reader’s understanding of the world and life in the valley is turned on its head.

As the heart and soul of the book, Rose Allgood is a wonderful main character who is both appealing and relatable. It’s hard to convey in words, but her character is written and handled wonderfully where her character’s internal thoughts and character logic perfectly age-appropriate and relatable to the intended readership demographics for the book without coming off as juvenile, tiring, or overdramatic common in YA books. A healthy mix of passiveness with quiet determination, she’s an easy character to root for. She and Gryphon have great hot and cold relationship dynamics and are good foils against each other. Caught between his familial loyalty vs the sense of doing what’s right, his character arc is also well-written, especially his shared childhood and past friendship with Rose. While this book could be pitched as a rather solid enemies-to-lovers story, the romantic elements are not the main focus and perfectly complement the dystopian and mystery storylines with just the right amount of teenage angst and miscommunication. Miscommunication is also utilized for plotting purposes and is based on the tense circumstances and their fear of hurting themselves and others which fits the narrative well vs other books that throw it in haphazardly to add conflict or up the stakes.

While other villagers and young adults in the village are varied and interesting, I personally felt that Rose and Gryphon’s allies could’ve either been introduced earlier or developed a bit more for later conflicts and dire situations to have more weight. This book revolves around an entire village and though there’s many adult characters, it’s the younger characters that are the most prominent and featured as the opposition to the dystopian status quo. Additionally, while the world-building, sequences of events, and secrets are excellent, I also found the villainous motives and arcs to be rather simplistic. Particularly with its most visible “villain”, I kept waiting for some kind of redemption or deeper nuanced agenda to justify or balance out their overtly oppressive actions. To Lourey’s credit, the backstory is there and serviceable but not to the complexity that the rest of the book has.

Mysterious, unsettling, and a unique take on the YA dystopian genre, The Verdant Cage is a wonderfully well-written and conceptualized book. Perfectly paced and plotted, the pages fly by and consistently build the momentum and stakes before ending on a dramatic final reveal, making its sequel a must read book. Although marketed as a YA novel, its darker themes and occasional descriptions of violence skews towards the older end of the YA demographics and has the complexity and maturity to also appeal to adult readers like myself. Jess Lourey has written books in a number of different genres and is an accomplished thriller author, but she can confidently add dystopian scifi/speculative fiction to her bibliography as The Verdant Cage is a polished and noteworthy standout!