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THE SICK ROSE
by Erin Kelly
Hodder & Stoughton Paperbacks, March 2012
344 pages
7.99 GBP
ISBN: 1444703854


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

To the keen gardener, sick rose syndrome means it's wise not to replace one dead rose with a healthy plant in the same spot. Erin Kelly's THE SICK ROSE, on the other hand, is about one woman's attempts to move on from a failed relationship twenty years before.

As a teenager, Louisa took the Goth route to rebel from her loving, well-off family, giving up a university place to sell essential oils and crystals in Kensington Market. The problems start when she falls for handsome but mysterious aspiring rock star Adam. Through clever use of plotting it's not clear until late in the book exactly why Louisa is finding it so hard to move on from the death of their liaison.

In contrast to Louisa, bookish teenager Paul is from the wrong side of the tracks. As a studious introvert he finds it hard to survive life on a sink estate until befriended by illiterate thug-in-the-making Daniel. The pair's adventures grow increasingly out of hand until a serious incident forces Paul into a world where, to return to a gardening analogy, the strands of the story can twine together more closely.

Still a working journalist, Kelly specializes in psychological suspense and what happens when ordinary people experience something extreme. Perhaps this closeness to apparent normality is what makes THE SICK ROSE so disturbing yet compelling. It's from the "I don't care if it's your birthday, we can't go out until I've finished this" school of fiction. The plot grasps and branches like its namesake, with a strong grip on the random coincidences that can both bring people together then blow them apart.

Sick or not, once this rose has got its thorns into you, it will be quite some time before you can disentangle yourself.

THE SICK ROSE is published in the United States as THE DARK ROSE, thus abandoning the William Blake reference.

§Lisa Kahlua is a writer based in Bristol. She enjoys reading a wide range of fiction, as long as it's not too gruesome.

Reviewed by Lisa Kahlua, March 2012

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