Rose Red [Paperback]

Flora Speer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1996

After the murder of their father, sisters Bianca and Rosalinda, with their mother, flee to a villa in the northern Italian Alps, swearing revenge on their enemy, but when the son of the assassin appears at their door one stormy night, Rosalinda discovers her true destiny.

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Leisure Books (Mm) (September 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0505521393
• ISBN-13: 978-0505521392
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,271,054 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't even finish it., May 2, 2005

By 

BinnyBoBen (Rome, GA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rose Red (Paperback)

This book was horrible. HORRIBLE! I stopped about 3/4 of the way through, completely disgusted. It centers around 2 sisters who are supposed to be each other's best friend. Throughout the whole 1st half of the book they're so sugary sweet to each other I wanted to puke. That's not how sisters usually treat each other, best friend or not. Then, since they're such best friends, one of the sisters has sex with the other sisters man as soon as she possibly can, because she was feeling left out and lonley. Pitiful excuse for a book. But of course, the man they both want happens to have a twin, and the twin is the one that the stupid sister has sex with instead of the other one. Of course. Very lame plot, horrible characters, unlikely scenes, and just flat bad writing. I'm sorry I wasted money on it. Ugh!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars IT'S A ***10*** EXCELLENT, March 10, 2009

By 

BOOK READER "snowkrystle" (WI, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rose Red (Paperback)

Once upon a time...they lived happily ever after.

I HAVE TWO DAUGHTERS, ONE A FLOWER AS PURE AND WHITE AS THE NEW-FALLEN SNOW AND THE OTHER A ROSE AS RED AND SWEET AS THE FIRES OF PASSION.

Bianca and Rosalinda were the only treasures left to their mother after her husband, the Duke of Monteferro, was murdered. Fleeing to a remote villa in the shadows of the Alps of Northern Italy, she raised her daughters in hiding and swore revenge on the enemy who'd brought her low.

The years passed until one stormy night a stranger appeared from out of the swirling snow, half-frozen and wild, wrapped only in a bearskin. To the entire household, he appeared something different. Was an excellent story line. Two families who have been almost exterminated by the same factions come together.

I was totally enthralled with this book. One of the BETTER books I have read...not quite up to the KEEPER status, but very close.

I know not everyone likes the same books, but I don't know what book the one reader was reviewing, even bad it deservers more than one star. How can a person review a book if they didn't even finish it. One of the more different and better story lines I have read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I wanted this to be a five.., August 13, 2007

By 

JR Corry "Jenny" (Fl) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rose Red (Paperback)

Unfortunately, a good plot plus 4 cups of sugar and 3 cups of sex does not a good novel make. The story really had promise: the plot's great, the two heroines (Rosalinda and Bianca), inspite of their annoyances, have redeeming qualities and are interesting characters. A little ways into the book, though, the author seemed to stop trying.

Rosalinda (who I will refer to hereafter as "Rose" to make typing easier) and Bianca lost their father when they were both small to a murderous conspiracy. When the son of the man believed to hatch this conspiracy stumbles into their home one wintry night, Rose takes an instant liking to him. This is the first romance in the tale, and at first author Speer takes her time in developing it. When Rose realizes that her mother suspects the handsome stranger, Andrea, of ill intentions and plans to throw him out of the house if need be, Rose hurries to Andrea's room all a flutter to warn him and the romance suddenly takes a jumpstart. The encounter between them left much to be desired, subtlety being one of them: when Rose enters Andrea's room, she pretty much throws herself on him and cries, "Oh, be careful!" or some equally fainthearted cry. Andrea cuddles her, watches as she chews her lip fretfully, and calls her adorable. This entire scene made me wonder what the author was thinking of; one minute the characters are behaving like polite strangers and the next they're cuddling? And really: turning the heroine from fiery woman to adorable girl the minute she's with the hero is one of my pet peeves. Could we please try to keep the heroes of the tale mature adults?

Unfortunately, this detestable child treatment of the heroine is repeated in the book and, strangely enough, it mainly happens when the hero's present. When we're reading the story from Rose's point of view, she's portrayed as a somewhat naive but fiery woman who's competent and independent inspite of her unlikeable mother's smothering. When Rose is with the hero, on the other hand, she's often suddenly treated as a little girl. In fact, one of the scenes between them was downright infuriating. In the middle of a heated argument, Andrea literally picks Rose up like a five-year-old and carries her, complaining all the way, to the bedroom where he proceeds to throw her on the bed and have sex with her. Of course, she eventually stops complaining and decides she wants to have sex, upon which Rhett Butler-oh excuse me, I mean Andrea-simply pulls up her dress and drops his pants. Let's hear it for romance, huh?

Seriously, I thought this disgusting method of "seducing" a woman was given up in the thirties. Don't we know now that when women are upset, you don't pick them up like they're children throwing tantrums and more or less force sex on them anyway? That "hero" deserved a good kick in the crotch! Rose's feelings were completely disregarded and we're apparently expected to find this dominating crap romantic! Never mind the fact that any sex whatsoever would have been out of place in this scene anyway, the author didn't even manage to make it good! What could have been halfway meaningful was traded for typical (and very outdated) trash sex tactics.

Speaking of sex, there were a total of two great sex scenes in this book; everything else was unnecessary and overdone. Rose's older sister, Bianca, gets her own taste of trashy lust and a dumb rutting male when she meets Andrea's twin brother. She finds him hiding in the wild, promises to bring him food, and on their second meeting (or was it their first?) he proceeds to put his hands up her dress until he finds out she's a virgin. Yechh! That's pretty much the way that whole scene goes: Andrea's brother talks up a storm while Bianca lies like a mannequin in his arms, staring at him dreamily while he gropes her. Of course, he stops when he finds that she's a virgin and valiantly tells her that he won't have sex with her. Judging by his actions, and Bianca's defense of him later on when she relates the story to Rose, we're supposed to think this jerk's a gentleman because he didn't have sex with her when he found out she was a virgin. Oh yeah, some gentleman; never mind that he gropes her on their second meeting like a piece of meat, just as long as he doesn't go all the way! And seriously, I am SO sick of the "experienced hero, shrinking virginal heroine" deal! This portrayal is NOT romantic, it's worn out, sexist and stereotypical, not to mention cliche. And what's with these "heroes" anyway? One gropes a woman he doesn't know (though of course he claims he loves her) and the other practically rapes the heroine as though sex will end their argument! This is definitely not a book you'll want an influential young girl to read.

The sex scene between Bianca and the other twin on their wedding night is one of the most overly detailed sex scenes I've ever come across. Just in case we didn't get the idea that Bianca's a shrinking virgin the first time, author Speer decided to paint a scene with her gawping at her new husband's manhood and dramatically sighing, "I'm afraid you are far too big. This couldn't work." He of course laughs affectionately, climbs on top of her anyway, and we get to read about how he slowly and painstakingly "fills her to the hilt". If you think this is too much information now, imagine how I felt when reading this book! I wanted to tell the author I know how sex is done and I hardly need it spelled out for me.

The greatest shame of this book is that if it had been edited a good deal more, with many of the unnecessary scenes chopped out, it could have been a great book. However, the unnecessary sex, the sugary sweetness, and the blatantly unlikeable heroes end up choking the story like vines. My advice to Flora Speer would be to get a new editor and try reading some quality literature before she attempts her next book. It could do her a world of good.