Fair Rosaline

A sharply seductive, fresh retelling of Romeo and Juliet.

The reader is swept off their feet alongside Rosaline when she meets handsome, broad-shouldered Romeo Montague at a party. Rosaline, enjoying her last few days of freedom before entering a nunnery, is eager for anything that could help her escape her boring fate. Her chemistry with Romeo is electrifying, he gives her sweet tokens and knows just the right words to say. When Rosaline starts to notice red flags, it's worth ignoring for another hour spent in Romeo's arms. But when Romeo turns his sights to her thirteen-year-old cousin Juliet, Rosaline is furious.

This retelling felt very fresh due to the new point of view. It's fun to see Rosaline given a voice in the story. When Rosaline turns from lovesick to sick of love, she becomes a force to be reckoned with. I love how all the original characters are there - Tybalt, Nurse, Juliet - but their personalities leap off the page in a way they never could in the original Shakespeare. The descriptions of the decadent parties, lush gardens and romantic balconies will transport the reader to another time.

After reading this feminist retelling of Romeo and Juliet, you'll never see the characters the same way again.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

this was such a good retelling, I loved the use of Romeo and Juliet. The characters felt like the same characters from the original tale, it had what I was looking for in this type of book. Natasha Solomons has a great writing style and created characters that I knew and still be unique. It had a great overall story and I'm glad I got to read this.

"She had walked beneath this image of the wheel a thousand times and paid it no heed, but now, as she stared up at it, Rosaline wondered where upon fortune’s wheel she was fixed. Was she the happy soul, hoisted just before the midnight hour, about to marry and enjoy fate’s happy gifts? Or was the wheel turning and she already spinning, poised to fall?"

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

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.

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!!!

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.

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.

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC. I am a lover of history so to hear this story from another perspective was right up my alley! Once i started i could not put it down! Romeo was a man-whore!?! Yes we knew there was Rosaline before Juliet but wow! This story was so captivating I encourage all to read it!

I love how FAIR ROSALINE turns the traditional story on its head and gives us a fresh new viewpoint. Solomons does a great job with pacing and keeping the reader's interest as the storyline develops. Her extensive research is incorporated seamlessly, and the scenes are evocative and transportive.

Due to the ages of the characters, at times this feels more like a YA novel than one for adults. However, ultimately this means it should appeal to a wide range of audience.

I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I went into this book expecting something campy and fun like the new Disney+ movie Rosaline. Instead I got the play Shakespeare never wrote (or frankly could have ever written). This gorgeous retelling is done in the style of the original Romeo and Juliet and done so well that I could barely tell what was Solomons' words and what was an original line from the play. It adds depth and dimension to all of the characters, not just the forgotten Rosaline. I loved the choice to draw inspiration from Shakespeare's other Rosaline(d)s (who number among some of my favourite Shakespeare heroines) and the result is a unique, wonderful female lead. This is a book for lovers of Maggie O'Farrell or Kristin Hannah. There are no swooning maidens to be found here.

Ripped from Shakespeare’s hands, this retelling was masterful and incredibly ingenious.

This book surmises that perhaps Romeo wasn’t the man depicted as he was in Romeo and Juliet, but a predatory man with an insatiable appetite for gaining live of young, impressionable women… and I LOVED it!

This is by far, the best Shakespearean retelling and one of the best retellings in general, that I have ever read. It just makes so much more sense. While it’s a fictional tale conjured from another fictional tale, the story of Romeo and Juliet had become so real, and I think this way of portraying the story was absolutely perfect.

Instead of hearing of Rosaline through passing stories, we get a story straight from her mouth. We see her go through all of the motions of falling for the man who was very clearly grooming her. The different, nobler side of Tybalt was, maybe, one of my favorite parts of this story. And then, to see as Rosaline must watch the man she loved fall for someone else, the way we all know he does with Juliet…

This book was fantastic and I absolutely recommend it!

Ladies, beware the Romeos of the world. Oh my goodness, this is how the story should have been told - this is such a refreshing and relatable perspective on what women deal with and our resilience. Bravo!