Seven Deadly Thorns by Amber Hamilton Review

The Cruel Prince meets Powerless in this dark academia romantasy that will tattoo itself onto your heart.
 

In the cursed Kingdom of Aragoa, the punishment for magic is death.
 

Even the students at Vandenberghe Academy aren't spared. When Viola Sinclair's deadly shadow magic is discovered, the queen gives her assassin a new assignment and a new cursed tattoo: seven-thorned rose on his arm for the seven days he has to hunt Viola down and kill her. If he doesn't, he will be the one to die.
 

The assassin is Roze Roquelart--entitled prince, arrogant fellow student, and the one person Viola hates more than anyone. Roze should revel in the chance to end her life, but he desperately needs something from Viola and her magic. And he's willing to spare her life--and fake their engagement--to get it.
 

Forced to work together, Viola and Roze must contend with deadly threats, dangerous secrets, and an impossible attraction. Will they give in to their deepest desires, even if it means destroying Aragoa--and risking both their lives?
 

HER WORST ENEMY. HIS ONLY CHANCE.
 

Be swept away by the sizzling, irresistible enemies-to-lovers romantasy with magic more destructive than your darkest nightmares.

Pitched as an enemies-to-lovers, cursed prince story with a dark academia flavor, on paper Seven Deadly Thorns has a lot going for it. Capitalizing on many popular romantasy tropes and hooks, the story has all the right elements in addition to having some pretty snappy action and great ambiance at times. However, the execution leaves much to be desired and by trying to cram so many different storylines into the book, the result is that nothing is done particularly well. Great ideas brought down by whiplash storytelling and nonsensical plotting, unfortunately this one was a bit of a mess for me, though at least it is a mildly entertaining mess. (On Goodreads 1.5 star rating rounded down)

When I started reading Seven Deadly Thorns, I wasn’t entirely sure if it was Harry Potter-esque Dramione fanfic that was reworked to be an original story or coincidentally ended up this way given the similarity of its setting, characters, and general feel. Whether it was an intentional choice or not, the book’s best feature for me was its setting, atmosphere, and mysterious intrigue (in the first half of the book only). Starting in a commons courtyard, dark academia classes, prefects, and iconic castles, the setting is very familiar to many dark academia romantasy books but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Vanderberghe Academy and the castle of Aragoa are just inherently cool settings steeped with mysterious intrigue, and the story’s hidden weapon is the foreboding and deathly mist that haunts everything outside of the castles. Deathly mist isn’t a unique concept, but the visuals of having dark, gray and swirling clouds of poison outside every window and tunnel provides great ambiance regardless of how its use, in spite of Amber Hamilton’s very weak world-building; magical wards keep the mist from entering the castle and caverns where the survivors have been sheltering for twenty years which is a copout explanation for how the mist doesn’t enter through chimneys, ventilation, etc. Additionally, the fact that both the academy and main castle were conveniently built fully enclosed and sheltered prior to the mist being released for no purpose is a stretch (the land is described as previously lush, forested and green, not winterly). Though the book has a very fast pacing and casual prose, when Hamilton slows down and lets the gravity and dread of the Kingdom’s status haunt the story, the setting really works well.

Written specifically as an enemies-to-lovers arc and a cursed cruel prince archetype, both Violet Sinclair and Roze Roquelart are rather generic, but pleasant characters to follow. While both are very Dramione coded, Violet’s bushy and wild curly brown hair and Roze’s ashe blonde and swooping hair a spitting image of Hermione and Draco, the formula has been proven to work time and time again and that’s no different here. While the dialogue isn’t particularly well-written and their hot and cold dynamics is a bit herky jerky, their general chemistry is good! I particularly liked Violet’s fear of herself and her magical powers as well as both characters’ “I’m dangerous and the villain” motif that is one of the book’s most notable recurring themes. And while I’m not entirely sure whether this book is meant to be a YA or New Adult novel, the spicy tension is good and surprisingly much more adult and explicit than I was expecting; the hallmark money scene involves breathplay, hand tying, and semi open-door smut.

And that is where the positive aspects of the book end because unfortunately I found the rest of this book to be a rushed and disastrous mess. The biggest problem I had with this book is that it has way too many narrative elements and does spend enough time or provide details necessary to make them work. For the romantasy fans, we have tropes including enemies-to-lovers, touch her and you die, fake dating/engagement, commoner x prince, life or death situation, forced proximity, forbidden romance/can’t touch each other, I could go on. For the fantasy elements, there’s an evil magic mirror, the hunting and death of all magic users, widespread death by mist, a murder mystery, a secret organization, kingdoms at wars, conspiracy theories, and a half-hearted attempt at Snow White motifs that are quickly forgotten after the first few chapters (Roze eating apples and the touch of death being particularly heavy-handed). As one could expect given so many different narrative elements, the story feels like it gets pulled in different directions constantly and given the typical fast-paced nature of YA books, nothing is given enough time to be properly developed. Worse, Hamilton constantly throws in plot twists that are meant to be surprising, but with little to no foreshadowing, world-building, or connection to other elements, they come off as very random and baffling. Take for example the murder mystery of who killed the King where Violet and Roze enter a life or death deal to find the culprit within seven days represented by the seven thorned rose insignia marked on Roze’s forearm. Where one would expect a dark academia investigation, instead Hamilton gives the reader an awkwardly placed soiree that provides nothing of narrative value and a basic ballroom dancing and class disparity scene. A mysterious magical book is introduced, has no use until the last sixty pages of the book, and is then promptly used as an info-dumping world-building mechanism done way too late to feel fitting. An important locket that Violet has that’s integral to the story is just casually brought up moments before it’s used and only once at the beginning of the book in mere sentences. For a story covering seven days of a life-or-death investigation, Violet and Roze do surprisingly almost no investigating and are instead given chapters of random fluff of aimlessly wandering around.

To make matters worse, the story fundamentally doesn’t make sense and besides being full of plot holes, it often contradicts itself. As a YA book, I don’t expect every detail to have extensive backstories or hidden meaning per the intended readership. And if you turn your brain off and just go with it, the story can be mildly entertaining. However, for anyone that cares to pay attention, the story is quite baffling. The following are basic points that are mentioned in the book’s blurb and synopsis so I will not be spoiler tagging them, spoiler-related comments will follow appropriately hidden. At the start of the book, Roze chooses not to kill Violet, directly disobeying his mother’s orders. Following that incident, Roze tells Violet she must stay by his side 24/7 and they cannot let the Queen know she survived, as if all their other classmates, professors, or people around the castle won’t notice or alert the Queen. It is also revealed that Roze has seven days to kill Violet or else he will be killed which makes little sense. The Queen wants to rid the Kingdom of all meiga magic users but cannot harm them herself (reasons redacted). Roze being the best and possibly only huntsman that she has, apart from basic guards, why would she threaten and end his life which would put her own crusade in a substantially worse position?

Note: Below include major spoilers for the book’s story and ending:

As the story progresses, the plot progressively spirals into a hot mess. View Spoiler » Roze is revealed to not be human, a creation of the Queen’s despair and anger; the story magically creates a new person with a magic mechanic that has zero foreshadowing but just roll with it for now. Touching Roze is like poisoning and killing oneself, so he always wears leather gloves. Yet, during a spicy bedroom scene, he removes his gloves, kisses Violet’s body through a ridiculously sheer cloth fabric which is somehow able to hold back his poison? It’s implied he also fingers her while wearing gloves which I cannot imagine being very pleasant. Violet joins the secret society at the school whose purpose is to preserve all information deemed dangerous or to be destroyed by the Queen, membership being a dangerous commitment that puts a target on one’s back. Besides the fact that at no point in the book are there any obvious examples or threats to any of the members apart from the final chapters when all hell breaks loose, the group is supposed to be a hidden secret. Yet membership is marked by an elaborate moth mark tattoo meant to be subtle or hidden despite many of which are placed in plain sight like on Roze’s neck; sure, it’s attractive from a character design standpoint but defeats the purpose of being secretive, not to mention multiple students clearly having the same tattoo.

Additionally, character motivations across the board are illogical. When the King encounters Violet, while in a state of desperation, he recognizes that she is the son of King Leon from the opposing kingdom and swears that she’s the only one who has the power to stop the mist. Yet he proceeds to attack her and choke her, inadvertently causing her to kill him which is required per the story’s plot but contextually doesn’t make sense from the King’s point of view, he sabotaging the only chance to save his land. The Queen is revealed to have created and released the mist due to her pain and anguish when Aragoa is attacked during what appeared to have been a peace treaty. Yet the mist completely destroyed her own kingdom and killed more of her own people than the war or conflict with the opposing kingdom would’ve ever caused and by keeping the mist present, it doesn’t benefit her reign whatsoever. One could make the argument that is a mad queen spiraling due to the influence of the magic mirror, but her release of the mist would’ve occurred prior to her descent into madness. Additionally, the Aragoa is supposed to be known for light magic of life while Castelle is known for shadows, darkness and death. As someone from the Kingdom of Aragoa, her magical powers should be based on giving life not killing people with a mist. Her daughter Belladonna who is possessed by the Queen at the end of the book as a vessel, claims to have known Violet and Roze were in love due to her power of insight. But if she knew they had feelings for each other the entire time or even only part of the story, why was she so mean and cruel to Violet throughout the entire book, especially considering that she herself was being mentally abused by the Queen? Bella’s 180 personality change at the end of the book is downright laughable.

And the elephant in the room is the final plot twist where it is revealed that Violet had accidentally killed the King and was fully aware how it happened. If she knew she had killed the King the entire time, what was the point of them looking for the culprit or trying to stop the Queen’s tirade? As Violet realizes her feelings for Roze and is distraught that they have dwindling days left to solve the King’s death or else Roze will die, she essentially spent all the seven days trying to follow and make up red herrings and purposefully sending Roze to his grave rather than trying to find a loophole or solution to the deathly deal. If this book was written in the 3rd person perspective, this kind of plot twist could be more believable as the reader would not necessarily know every thought or feeling in Violet’s head, or if the story had been written from Roze’s POV. But because the book is written in the 1st person present tense, the book describes how panicked that she doesn’t know who the killer is, how lost they are, etc etc. This makes no sense if she knows she’s the killer the whole time. This is the exact same grievous oversight and issue that ruined the ending of Never Lie by Freida McFadden that I read last year. If this is what Hamilton was set on doing for the ending, she shouldn’t have leaned into the who dunnit and instead focused on the “I am the villain” angle, why dunnit, or reflections on morality instead. And finally, the ending is the cherry on top of the nonsensical plotting. For Roze to escape his curse and the magic of the Queen, he dies via Violet’s shadows while she dies by being poisoned from kissing Roze. The two then awaken in grassy a field in the Kingdom of Castelle which has become the “Kingdom of Death” due to the excessive use of dark magic. But as the land begins to heal, it is told that Castelle will no longer be the Kingdom of Death as the balance with Aragoa is restored. When Castelle recovers, does the Kingdom and all its “dead” residents become alive again? Isn’t Aragoa supposed to be the Kingdom of light and life, shouldn’t Castelle’s restoration be tied to that? Since Roze was created from the Queen’s despair, how does he still exist when she doesn’t, his entire existence seems like a paradox. If they’re dead, they’re technically not alive and are in some bizarre afterlife purgatory yet still in the same living world as before. In theory I liked the ending Hamilton was shooting for conceptually and I liked the final solution in death approach given the story’s recurring motif of poison, but the actual execution of the ending, details, and takeaway were shockingly unsatisfying for me in just about every way. « Hide Spoiler

In theory, Seven Deadly Thorns had more than enough good ideas and narrative elements to make a compelling romantasy story, but somehow everything felt like it went wrong when put together and it just kept getting worse and worse as it progressed. Reading this book felt akin to the world-famous Kitchen Sink ice cream sundae that has too much of everything thrown in haphazardly with no rhyme or reason, resulting in a messy and regrettable experience. And although the prose was not necessarily the most lyrical thing I’ve read and much of the story felt very derivative, most of the first half of the book was pretty fun in a simplistic, brain-off and chill kind of way. But the plotting, character logic, and details are so contradictory and baffling, you really must wonder what happened during the drafting and editing process given the book’s half-baked nature (to the editor and publisher’s credit, the book is at least presentable and free of typos and poor grammar). I received this book as part of a recent FairyLoot subscription and I’m quite disappointed that out of all the YA fantasy books out there they could’ve picked, they chose to go with this, though the edition is very pretty. For those that are interested in a cursed prince narrative, a Dramione inspired romantasy, or even a Snow White or fairytale inspired book, there’s far better options out there than this one.