Review: Bloodrose

Title: Bloodrose
Author: Andrea Cremer
Date Released: January 3rd, 2012
Pages: 406
Rating: 4 out of 5

Description:
The Ultimate Sacrifice.

Calla has always welcomed war. But now that the final battle is upon her, there’s more at stake than fighting. There’s saving Ren, even if it incurs Shay’s wrath. There’s keeping Ansel safe, even if he’s been branded a traitor. There’s proving herself as the pack’s alpha, facing unnamable horrors, and ridding the world of the Keepers’ magic once and for all. And then there’s deciding what to do when the war ends. If Calla makes it out alive, that is.

In the final installment of the Nightshade trilogy, New York Times bestselling author Andrea Cremer creates a novel with twists and turns that will keep you on the edge of your seat until its final pages. A dynamic end to this breathtaking trilogy.

Review:
To sum up Bloodrose in a couple of words, it was definitely a quest.  It was a quest to find all of the elements for the Elemental Cross, a quest to defeat the Keepers, and of course, a quest to find who Calla's true love is.

Bloodrose starts off right where Wolfsbane leaves off and gets straight to the point.  Ren is back now, fighting on the same side as the Searchers, although his fight with Shay hasn't end.  After Ren comes back, Calla, Shay and the rest of the Searcher team go on their first adventure to find the second part of the Elemental Cross.  From there, Calla continues her adventure to look for the rest of the elements of the Elemental Cross, rid the world of the Keepers, and make the hard decision of who she would rather choose: Shay or Ren.  She also has to face the many other problems that face her, such as the safety of her brother, establishing her position as the pack's leading alpha, without an alpha mate, and the threat of the Keepers.

There were three parts in the book, each one titled with the elements of Air, Water, and Fire.  It made sense that Cremer decided to name each part one of the elements because in each part, Calla and her team are planning and carrying out their quest to find the sword of that certain element.  The setting of the location of each sword was absolutely cool, too, and totally matched the element of the sword.  For example, for the fire sword, they had to go through a volcano.  A volcano!  It was pretty insane and intense for them to get through that volcano. 

The love triangle betwen Calla, Shay, and Ren was definitely emphasized even more in Bloodrose, and was probably the main focal point.  Or at least something that really absorbed you into the book.  It was crucial to the book, because it was the final book, and the whole triangle had to be resolved.  You could see Calla was totally leaning towards Shay more than Ren, although I had a little bit of hope for Ren.  It seemed like a really obvious answer because there's always that character in the love triangle that you KNOW is going to be the one. 

I still loved Calla and how she continued to be the alpha of her pack.  Usually, there's supposed to be a female and a male alpha, but Calla defies the norm, and proves her strength and courage.  She breaks through the female stereotypes, and I love her for that.  Ren might always be my favorite because there's just something about Shay that always seemed a little off.  Shay's a cool male character, but he always seemed just a little pompous, like he was the best because he was the Scion and he had Calla and he was a Guardian.  He was a little possessive over Calla, too.  Like, Ren could keep his cool a little more than Shay could, and I respected Ren for that.

The ending was really something.  It wasn't something that I was expecting, and kind of made me want to cry, partly because Calla's story was coming to an end.  It was definitely a shocker, and if you've read the previous two books, we all know how Andrea Cremer always knows how to make a spectacular ending :) It really rounded out the series so that it really couldn't go on anymore, but was a little upsetting at the same time.

Overall, Calla's story in Bloodrose was a pretty fantastic ending to the Nightshade series.  The ending of the book was really nice, but sort of bittersweet.    I wish that there could have been more, although I think there's a prequel coming out soon called Rift, and it seems to focus more on the Searchers this time rather than the Guardians.  I'd definitely recommend this series to anyone who likes love triangles (although most people don't) and exploring the creative worlds that authors create, such as the one of Keepers, Searchers, and Guardians. 

Cover Review:
I always kind of wondered what the cover would look like if they had kept with the original cover art...  I'm not the biggest fan of the cover, but it's pretty cool with Calla looking behind her at the wolf.  I love how this one's red though because the title is Bloodrose.

Cleo :)

*Description and cover from goodreads.com
**Review copy purchased.