10/10 would reckoned to anyone who loves romance! This book hooked me in with the characters, the plot and drama. I love the retelling of Romeo and Juliet but with Rosaline before Juliet was a thing.

This book was gifted to be by the publisher through NetGallery, all opinions and reviews are my own. #NetGallery

I love historical fiction and I was excited for a retelling of Romeo and Juliet through a woman's perspective. The first 25% is a little slow if you're not a fan of historical fiction, but I do think the pace picks up. I appreciate that this book gives another perspective into Romeo and we realize that he's really not that great of a person. I enjoyed Rosaline as a character. I enjoyed experiencing her from a teenager to a strong, powerful woman as an adult. I also loved when she eventually realized Romeo wasn't great and tricked him.

I am a fan of Shakespeare so the subject matter of this book is what initially drew me in. I was surprised at how much I loved it!! I loved the POV of Rosaline and the fact that not all stories are what they seem. I heard once that the person with the power is the version that gets told and believed, and this book made me think of that. I’ve already recommended it to my sister!!!

To read the full review and see this books mood board, click here: https://barclayann27.wixsite.com/enroute/post/a-brief-review-fair-rosaline

Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark (and NetGalley ily) for an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Set during the unknown days and hours before Romeo meets Juliet, Fair Rosaline gives voice and context to the character we all know of, but have never heard from. As Solomons recognizes in the Authors Note, although Rosaline is a pivotal character in the first Act of Romeo and Juliet, she never actually appears or speaks, leaving the audiences perception of her entirely up to Romeo’s opinions of her. This novel works to remedy that.

Much of the first half of the book read very similar to the Romeo and Juliet story we all know. Romeo playing out the same story, just with a different girl. There was even a moment when he, quite randomly, suggested suicide to Rosaline where she is shocked by the suggestion. These “callbacks” to exact phrases or actions, especially that of Romeo, from the original play, were interesting at first but began to feel contrived after they appeared in the narrative in ways that felt forced, like the fain double-suicide suggestion.

Alongside the cruelty that Romeo shows after Rosaline rejects him, the dramatic emotions of love he expressed before start to not add up. Is he meant to be nothing more than a sociopath predator? I’m fine with him being both, but wished his character didn’t come off as so one-dimensional. Perhaps too much was relying on our preconceived notions of Romeo’s character and our assumed empathy for him, assuming that there would be no need for it in the book…

Solomons re-examines Romeo and Juliet as the story of a predator and the child he preys upon, and exposes all of Verona as complicit in Romeo’s victimization of young girls. Ideal for Shakespeare fans who always felt a little uneasy about pop culture’s romanticization of Romeo and Juliet’s courtship, the book would make a very interesting edition to a course on Shakespeare adaptations or light reading for anyone interested in feminist criticism of Shakespeare.

The book’s strengths lie in the characterizations of Rosaline, the novel’s heroine, and Tybalt, her cousin. Tybalt’s character is expanded from the glimpses we see of him in the play, and done so in a way both satisfying and complementary to the development of our heroine. Rosaline is a fully realized and relatable character, and her deep familial love for her cousin Juliet carries the heart of the novel. I also appreciated the setting of recently plague-swept Verona, which made death and decay a constant presence in both story and scenery. The death of Rosaline’s beloved mother, whose presence looms large in the book, is also well done, and is nicely contrasted with the emotional absence of Juliet’s mother Lady Capulet and the doting over-permissiveness of Juliet’s other maternal figure, her nurse.

The writing is at its strongest when Rosaline (who never appears onstage in Shakespeare’s tale) is pictured outside of scenes depicted by the source material, for example interacting with her family, falling for Romeo, or visiting a nunnery. Solomons seems hesitant, however, to divert too much from Shakespeare’s play, and in order to convey the play’s information to us through Rosaline’s perspective she has Rosaline lurking awkwardly in the background of several play scenes, reproducing them nearly word for word in a manner that felt slightly disjointed from the rest of the novel. I think the retelling would have benefitted from standing more confidently on its own two feet, and didn’t require the scaffolding of near-exact scene reproduction.

The book is classed as adult historical/literary fiction, but I think it would be entirely accessible to YA readers and would serve well as a bridge title.

You think you know the most famous love story in the world? Think again. “Fair Rosaline” lets us imagine a different tale entirely. Rosaline, Romeo’s first “crush”, is not going to just sit back and watch her cousin, Juliet, make one of the biggest mistakes in her life, falling for Romeo.

This story does make you rethink everything you thought you knew of Shakespere’a tragic lovers.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

This story was definitely an interesting one. If you remember reading/being forced to read Romeo and Juliet in high school, you will remember that Romeo's first love was NOT Juliet but Rosaline. This book goes behind the scenes into Rosaline's story and how Romeo was literally THE WORST.

I like that there were details from the play that were incorporated from this novel. I also like how the characters tied together. If I am being honest, I was at times very annoyed by Juliet until I remembered that she was just thirteen. I enjoyed how Rosaline was able to eventually see Romeo for whom he truly was, and I loved how she tricked him.

If you are a fan of the play, I definitely suggest giving this one a read. It was fun to read the story (while I am currently teaching it to students) from a different angle.

I enjoyed this book and the different point of view and take on a classic! What a great read!

Thank you #Netgalley and the publishers for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book!

Anyone who knows me knows that Romeo and Juliet is probably my favorite book, I teach it every year, and I think it’s a great entryway to Shakespeare for students. That being said, Rosaline has been getting a lot of notoriety recently with a TV show and books, exploring her story and her connection to Romeo. My students often become very focused on Romeos impulsivity, and the age difference between himself and Juliet, this book continues to look at Romeo as not an innocent, but maybe someone with some nefarious undertones and some questionable track records with women. While this book does require you to suspend this belief at many times, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and look forward to sharing pieces of it with my students as we continue to flush out Romeo’s character.

Fair Rosaline is such a good book! If you are a fan of Romeo and Juliet and enjoy retellings, then this book is for you. It is definitely darker than the original story and very entertaining. I also really love that Rosaline finally got her own story.

at in Shakespeare’s play - really only described by the one word, “fair” - Rosaline comes alive here as Juliet’s 15-year-old Capulet cousin. Before Juliet, Rosaline is Romeo’s crush. Both fall hard for the other after meeting at a party on Montague property. As Romeo pursues Rosaline, the reader starts to get a view of Romeo as a lover. But there is something off with the young man, as he begins to plan his and Rosaline’s get-away as a couple - because they are forbidden as are Romeo and Juliet in the original play. Rosaline becomes suspicious and starts to look into Romeo’s past as a lover and so begins a race to save herself and, eventually, her cousin.

I enjoyed this book even though the genre is not my usual. (I don’t go for straight-up romances and this is a lot of romance.) I’ll never think of Romeo again as a poor, star-struck, doomed lover. The story holds nothing back, boldly imagining Romeo as a desperate cad, hopping from one (very) young girl to the next. And, his relationship with a friar-gone-bad makes the outcomes of his affairs even more serious than what the reader imagines at first.

This is a bold retelling and it requires that the reader suspend disbelief many times, but, for all that, I enjoyed it. It is well-written and feels authentic to the original, even while going in a wild direction. And, the strong female lead is a welcome relief from the swooning females of the original. Recommended for fans of Romeo and Juliet that don’t mind some serious deviating from the well-known (and well-loved) storyline.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for access to this e-ARC.

A really fun book for someone who LOVES Romeo and Juliet! I liked how it took a more light-hearted turn to the original story!

Why must retellings always make villains out of the original story’s characters?

I’m torn. I enjoyed the first half of this novel without much complaint, but the moment Romeo was made to be a “player” I had a sense of doom.

In attempting to make Rosaline the hero of the story, she’s instead more of a fool than Romeo and Juliet ever were. Had she been sent off to the nunnery immediately, no harm would’ve come to anyone. By the 70% mark it was hard to dismiss her actions as naive — by that point, she was nothing more than a destructive mess.

I would hope that to tell a female side characters’ story, to make her the main character, you wouldn’t need to make villains of the original leads to provide her with a story. See Hulu’s Rosaline film for an example of playing into the nativity of Romeo and Juliet rather than completely changing their personalities.

All this to say, if you’d read/studied/enjoyed Romeo and Juliet, there’s a chance you will not enjoy this take on Rosaline. Unless, that is, you have a deep rooted hatred for Romeo Montague.

Oh, what a deliciously dark twist on the original play. In this version, the villains from Romeo & Juliet are our heroes and vice versa. The author cleverly uses many of the same lines from Shakespeare's play but are spoken by different characters, giving them new meanings. The plot builds slowly just as Shakespeare's plays do, with the action exploding in Act III. This brilliantly follows the main points of the original yet gives us a new vision through the eyes of Rosaline.

Is this a feminist retelling? Of course, but I think Shakespeare would approve. After all, he was unique in writing female characters that were smart & strong-willed, refusing to live their lives completely controlled by the patriarchy of their time. There are glimpses of the Me Too movement here and it's a natural fit in this context. Even reading about the plague as it is used in the plot now feels much like our struggles as a society with COVID. Shakespeare wrote for the common man and this book only confirms his brilliance to me.

I taught Romeo & Juliet as well as other Shakespearean plays for decades and I loved this fractured version in which our heroines decide to save themselves, as Romeo is hoisted by his own petard. It's glorious and sends the right message to young women. I'll be buying copies for my daughters, granddaughter, and a few former students as soon as it's published!

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC. The review is my own.

Thank you, SOURCEBOOKS Landmark, Sourcebooks Landmark, and NetGalley!

I liked Rosaline as a student reading R&J for class, and was always hurt how she was spoken of. She was going off to be a nun, she was the Capulet Romeo first professed to love, and was so quickly forgotten when he met Juliet. He'd just been sulking Rosaline was going off to a nunnery and spurning him, whereas to me, it seemed as if she was just. . . chilling and not that into him.
He then imprints onto her child cousin, and that always made me uncomfortable. Of course her love for him was true, but how was Romeo's, when he kills her cousin, when they've just met? I did not necessarily cast him as the villain, as I knew that to be the families in the feud, who did not realize and did not look to their tormented children.

Instead here, Romeo is attracted to young girls and his power over them, moving from one to another. He's a sexual predator, supported by his Friar friend, and he hurts girls he passes off to others. I also appreciate too (and I am certain this was purposeful, as Natasha Solomons is Jewish) how very Xtian it was, with the antisemitism of "elites" running underage rings conspiracy. A church was used, a New Testament, a friar, and fair looks of the men involved were repeatedly emphasized.

Beautiful here, was the relationship of Rosaline and Catalina, as well as Rosaline and Juliet. The girls are young teens, Juliet hiding her toys and trying to seem adult, Rosaline dealing with the grief of losing her mother and leaning on another mother figure.

What an interesting take on the classic tale of Romeo and Juliet. In this one however, Rosaline came first, and you follow the story of Rosaline navigating medieval life in Italy. Romeo may not be as romantic as he was once thought to be in this retelling. I think the writing was pretty solid, but I feel the story dragged a bit. I was interested in some parts, but others I felt more like skimming through. I think there is an audience that would love this one!

Everyone knows the story of Romeo and Juliet. Even if you've never read it, you still know the characters, but you may or may not remember Rosaline. She's Romeo's true love before he meets Juliet and this story turns everything you know about the original on its head.

This is such a unique concept, as we watch Rosaline deal with the realities of her life and watch her struggle to try to claim some independence and protect her cousin from her ex. I think this has such good writing and a truly good story. It's dark at times and deals with serious issues of medieval Italy - this is not like the latest Hulu movie about Roseline (although there are similar vibes at times)

love this take on a classic. Why not take a new look at an old favourite in a new perspective. great use of building up side characters.

3 out of 5 stars.

A great premise but just not executed to its fullest potential. It was quite slow and I found the plot to be a bit weak despite it being an iconic play.

(To be honest, I adore this play and I don't even hate Romeo. I always thought it was iconic that 2 teens with no freedom, (especially Juliet being married off to an old dude named Paris) who just wanted to bang kind of iconic?? And despite Romeo being the villain of this book it was like meh, I get it but I also don't).

All I want to read is a Benvolio x Mercutio fanfic so maybe this author can give us that if they do more Romeo & Juliet renditions!!

Rosaline falls for the charming Romeo just as she discovers her alternative is a life in a nunnery. However,Romeo is not the romantic hero that we've been led to believe and things quickly take a turn ...

This book has such an interesting premise and really makes you thing about this story that we've been told for years is the ultimate romance. Unfortunately, I found it very slow and felt it dragged a lot at points. A real shame, because with a punchier plot I think it could have been really special!

Thank you to the publisher for providing a review copy