Title: The White Rose
Author: Amy Ewing
Publisher/Year: Harper Collins 9/6/16
Length:   336 Pages
Series:  The Lone City #2

Overview

Violet is on the run—away from the Jewel, away from a lifetime of servitude, away from the Duchess of the Lake, who bought her at auction. With Ash and Raven traveling with her, Violet will need all of her powers to get her friends, and herself, out of the Jewel alive.

But no matter how far Violet runs, she can’t escape the rebellion brewing just beneath the Jewel’s glittering surface, and her role in it. Violet must decide if she is strong enough to rise against the Jewel and everything she has ever known.

My Thoughts

There’s so much going on in this second installment of the series, and whatever we thought the premise of the story was, it’ll be something entirely different.  From the end of the first book, we know that Ash has now been accused of raping Violet so he was set for execution, and Violet needed to find a way out of the palace.  we saw Garnet pop up at the last moment to help her with Lucien and that’s where we start off this journey.  We’re on the run with them on the way to somewhere safe that no one quite knows, in the hopes that clarity will be brought to them on what has to happen to save everyone from the royalty and then to see where the Lone City will go.

Throughout the journey, we see that there’s really something bigger going on.  Violet was able to get Raven out of the Jewel with the serum and they are bringing her with them in the hopes that maybe she will somehow survive even though they know that you die when you give birth if you’re a surrogate.  Then there’s the whole issue of Garnet popping up from time to time as well as lucien, the fact that Regimentals are looking for Ash and there are no clear directions to where they need to go – so we see that it’s going to be really really hard for them to make it, if they can even make it.

We know of course they’ll persevere, but i think that what’s really going to throw everyone is the whole story behind the powers of the surrogates – and while it’s not something that they expected at all, i had a feeling there was something bigger going on.  Mind you we get background to the island and what it started at before it was taken over, but we don’t really get to know why it’s only those really from the Marsh that have the Augeries.

Throughout this story we are seeing a tale of trust – who can they trust amongst themselves and who’s going to betray them.  Then there’s the point of righting history’s wrongs.  That’s the biggest thing that we see happening here.  It’s not just overthrowing the royalty to get equality for everyone, but it’s returning the island to it’s rightful owners and that’s the biggest challenge since that also means that they have to convince people that all that they know isn’t quite the case.

We see a lot of planning and plotting.  There’s a lady named Sil who’s really the shepard here -she’s the one that discovered the truth of the surrogates through her own experiences and has the pain to teach everyone else.  Violet seems to be the one that’s been chosen to lead it all – she’s got the power that she can harness the best and everyone is expecting her to conquer the world.  Then there’s Ash who really wants to find his place in this world since everyone seems to think that he’s just a companion.  There’s Garnet who’s really interesting to me – i thought he had a thing with Annabelle in the first book but i’m wondering if it’s now Raven based how they interact.  The thing with him though is that he’s playing both sides a bit – the jewel and the Black Keys – so we’ll have to see how that plays out.

We get yet another great cliffhanger at the end of the story that i was totally expecting to be honest.  Violet is on the run and the duchess needs a new surrogate who can do what she needs.  We ran into Ochre – Violet’s brother and find out that their sister is getting to be tested soon for the next auction and surprise – we learn that the Duchess all of a sudden has a new secret surrogate.  So i guess that’s what we’re going to be dealing with in book 3.  It’s a race against time to see if they will be able to put their strategy into action before it’s too late to save her sister.  all in all, a great many things to be accomplished in the finale.  Hope you guys enjoy this one – it’s really an interesting story.