This was everything I wanted it to be. I was fascinated in the world being built and fell in love with the characters. Thos was a great fantasy story with subtle romance. There are many layers to this story and I can't wait to see it unfold over the trilogy.

The war is over and the dark forces have won. The hero that was supposed to save them is dead. Princess Briony is captured as her castle is overrun with the enemy along with the rest of the Eversun citizens. And what do they do with the women? They are to be sent to auction.

When I tell that I was going THROUGH IT with a reading slump and this book YANKED me out of it, it was that good. This was my first ever introduction to Julie Soto’s writing and she did not disappoint. Soto really delivers a dark, post-war world with political intrigue and power-dynamics. She really had you rooting for characters and praying on the downfall of others.

This has all the makings of a good enemies to lovers and the SLOOOOOOW BURN 😮‍💨 the tension and chemistry between Toven and Briony is unmatched. It had me in a chokehold from the very beginning and I just knew it was going to be one of my top romantasy books. (This is dark romantasy so please check trigger warnings)

Also did I forget to mention this is adapted from a dramione fanfic? Because it is! I’ve personally never read it (wish I did) cause this published work is a must read.

Till then, I will be gnawing at the bars of my enclosure for book two.

Thank you to Forever Publishing for this eARC

This is the dark romantasy you’ve been waiting for. 🥵 Preorder this right now. I’m not even playing.

If you’re already a fan of Julie Soto, then you know you’re in for a banger.

I could NOT stop reading this. To the point where I was deeply irritated I had to go to work. (I still took my kindle and read on my break anyways but that’s beside the point. I devoured this absolute slice of dark romantasy heaven in less than 24hrs and I work 12s. I don’t think I slept. (Definitely check your triggers)

This books is based off the authors insanely popular Dramione fanfiction “the auction” (Which I admittedly had not read but had downloaded and will be immediately going to read to hopefully get some closure or sneak into how this might go. **This is book one in a trilogy so ofc it ends on a cliffhanger.**

I have zero doubts this book will blow up. Some people will undoubtedly be caught on the similarities to hp and will likely give it negatives for that. I found that how the magic system was changed helped this story stand apart. And by god, the tension between our FmC and literally everyone else pulls you through.

Toven Hearst has got to be the most criminal gentleman MMC I’ve read in a hot minute. How she wrote a gentleman into the role she did with such precision, it’s like mind magic. 😉 You’ve got this absolute villainous setting and premise and he’s just an angel. I die whenever he enters the page.

Synopsis: Princess Briony Rosewood a mind magic user of Eversun and twin to King Rory Rosewood who is taken out by the enemy kingdom Bromard, is captured and sent to auction. Where she is sold to be a “heartspring” and have her magic siphoned to her future enslaver Toven Hearst a heart magic user and former classmate.


Thank you NetGalley and Forever publishing for the absolute gift of being able to read this early and provide a review. I can’t wait for my signed special editions to be my shelf trophies.

Rose in Chains was an absolutely amazing story, even for someone who hasn't read Soto's original fanfic. It definitely stands on its own and I never felt as though I was missing anything. I literally could not stop reading this and finished it within 24 hours! As a lover of dark romance and romantasy, I can say that this book an amazing blend of both. Add in enemies to lovers? Literally a perfect book in my eyes.

The characters were relatable and captivating, no one felt flat or basic. Briony is an amazing FMC and the development of her character as she's able to gain confidence in herself and her abilities is so fun and gratifying to read. Briony is a strong and very intriguing character on her own and her actions and thoughts felt very realistic and rational for the situation. Toven, the MMC, is the ultimate morally gray protector for Briony and the *yearning* he demonstrates for her is next level. While he hides some secrets from Briony due to the circumstances, it never felt frustrating as it sometimes can. The romance between Briony and Toven is the ultimate enemies to lovers slow burn and is just *chef's kiss* immaculate. I want more of them - I need more of them!

The plot of Rose in Chains felt fresh and original which was quite nice because it does seem as though some romantasy books these days are quite similar. Since RiC was based off of a fic that I didn't read, I can't speak to any changes to that, but I did really love the world that Julie Soto built and the magic system of the world. It felt detailed without being unnecessarily complex and the plot was easy enough to follow, without being spoonfed to the reader, that the reading experience was amazing. Julie Soto's writing is amazing as is, so of course the writing style itself was great as well.

I definitely think that Rose in Chains should be considered one of the best romantasy books of the year and I'm already desperate for book 2!

4.5

started slow but was pretty crazy as it went. Aside from the ridiculously slow slow burn. gahhhh.

I feel it's also important to note that I've never read it watched Harry potter, so any Easter eggs are lost to me.

I have been slogging through this book since I got it the day it went on NetGalley. This is for sure a personal problem but I cannot separate that this is Harry Potter fan fiction when I want nothing to do with the world of Harry Potter anymore. The world building is incredibly info dumpy and I never cared about this book but I also really just don’t care about Harry Potter anymore and in my mind cannot separate that this is first and foremost fanfiction.

This was everything that I hoped it was going to be. I can't wait for the next book. I am really excited to purchase this and add to my collection. I am curious what the reviews are from people who haven't read the original, but I have and so I thought this was perfect. 10/10.

This was incredible! I’m a big Harry Potter fan but have never read any “Dramione” fan fiction so I wasn’t aware of the one that this is stemmed from. However, knowing that and being able to see the traces of the characters in this story was wonderful. It has such a great magic system, but one that’s easy to follow, great world building, characters that you just want more of and such a great slow burn romance. There’s such a dark element to the danger that Briony faces with the fall of her kingdom, that I was on the edge of my seat every time, hoping she’d survive and even more so hoping her and Toven would just confess to each other! I can’t wait to read more of the series!!

Thank you to NetGalley & Forever for letting me read and review this book!

Not to be dramatic, but as a teacher I stayed up until 11:30 because I HAD to see how this book ended. It was impossible to put down—I read when I woke up and brushed my teeth, I read while I cooked dinner…you get the point.

I devoured this, it did not stand a chance. I loved the heat, sexual tension, magic system, friendships, female unity, political siege, espionage, creatures, a dragon—the list could go on and on.

Read this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Forever(Grand Central) publishing for the advanced ARC

I’ve read about 30 books this year and this may just top them all. To say I fell hard for this book is an understatement. The characters, the plot, the angst/tension, the creativity in the writing… just wonderful! I’m looking forward to the rest of the books in the series,

Tropes-
Forced Proximity
Enemies to Lovers
Prophecy
Fake Relationship/Intimacy
Self-Sacrifice (for family)
Family Secret

I devoured this in two days. What a masterpiece... 10/10 characters, writing, plot, atmosphere.
How am I supposed to wait for the sequel?!

Something Julie Soto does really well is tension. With that said, this book was a slog and I think a lot of the issues that arose were primarily because this was reworked fanfic. Don’t get me wrong, I liked this book, and I will continue reading this trilogy, but this book wasn’t nearly as good I was expecting and there are a few main reasons why:

1. The beginning is so slow and info dumpy. I get that this book must build a world apart from the source material, but in my personal opinion it didn’t go very well. So much of this book is just throwing information at the reader and it made it hard to get through. There are also so many plot holes in this world that aren’t explained. The magic system and the political structure are very vague. I couldn’t fully immerse myself in this world because I was having to fill the holes myself by thinking back to the source material which pulled me out of this world.

2. The characters. At the very beginning of the book the reader has what feels like 1000 new characters thrown at them and the reader is just supposed to understand all of the different relationships from sometimes as little as one line. None of the side characters are fully developed and none of the relationships are built. The author tells you who certain characters are to other characters and doesn’t give much to back it up. It was like the author tells you someone is their friend and then immediately jumps into a scene where the reader is supposed to feel emotions based on this relationship but as the reader it was hard to buy when we hadn’t seen any interactions of these two characters prior to this scene. At the end of the book there were still some characters that would be mentioned by name and I couldn’t remember who in this story they were.

3. The structure of this book was off. This is a slow burn romance that has no pay off. The payoff is coming in later books I’m sure, but it made this book feel like a piece of a book rather than a complete book itself. It’s all information and build up and just as soon as things start to happen the book just end with a ‘to be continued.’ It didn’t feel like it’s own book, and I believe that stems from the fact that this one work was split up into a trilogy and it just didn’t really work. I would rather a 1200 page complete book, than a 450 page part of a book.

While this book was somewhat of a disappointment, it wasn’t bad. There were so many things that I loved. I really loved the building relationship between Briony and Toven. I loved their chemistry and their banter. I also really enjoyed the flashback scenes and thought they helped in understanding some of these characters. It really helped in the character development of Briony, and I can’t wait to see her have her moment and come into her abilities later on in this series. The ‘spicy’ scenes in this book were really well done and while they were basically all build up, they had me on the edge of my seat wanting more. I understand why things couldn’t get all the way there in the context of this story being told, so I like that spice was minimal, but it has me so excited for what is to come.

While this book wasn’t a hit for me, it still has me really excited about the rest of this series. It was a fine introduction into this world, and I am anxious for me. There are things that I wish would have been done different, but I do have hope that this series will eventually become an all time favorite for me once we get the full story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Forever publishing for providing me with an advanced reader copy of this book!

I was very interested to read this book largely because it would be the first time I read a fanfiction and then the published version of that fanfiction. I was hesitant to read the fanfiction on which this is based because a story where women are sold as sex slaves just does not appeal to me. However, I enjoyed her other lighter fanfictions and decided to give The Auction a look before it was pulled from AO3. That was my journey to this book, which I would never have picked up if I had just read the synopsis. I struggle with books that take away so much agency from the women in the story by their very design and put them through horrific circumstances. While I want to give Soto her due that I think she gave Briony more agency than is usually possible in a story with this kind of framework, the beginning of this story was hard for me to read because of the subject matter. I also often struggle seeing this story as romantic because even though Toven is taking good care of Briony and she is definitely in far better circumstances than her peers, the bottom line is that she is still his "property." I wish the story would go further in Toven making it clearer his motivations for why he's doing what he is doing. But we probably wouldn't have a trilogy if he did that. I just really, really don't want girls who read this to come away with the wrong themes and ideas about what love looks like.

However, there were many things I enjoyed about this story, and I found myself doing a comparison between the fanfiction and this new, updated version and started putting together a bulleted list in my head.

Updates in Rose in Chains I liked:
-I loved that Soto aged the characters up. It was a good move for the story, and it helped me feel better knowing people with fully developed frontal lobes were the ones making decisions.
-There was a scene I really didn't like in the fanfiction that was disrespectful of Hermione's bodily autonomy. It was modified beautifully in this book and was turned into a moment where Briony took some of her power back.
-I thought Soto did an admirable job creating her own world, and it was cool to see what changes she made when she wasn't bound to another pre-established story.
-The heartstring element was very interesting, and I'm curious to see how that progresses in the series. It also helped the entire idea of the auction make more sense in the story. While I do believe there could be (and have been historically) societies who would think so little of women as to sell them into sex slavery as war trophies, adding the heartstring plotline made it more layered.
-The governmental system was intriguing. The line vs. the monarchy was an interesting dichotomy, and I thought Soto did a good job of weaving our understanding of the line throughout the story.

Updates in Rose in Chains I didn't like:
-In the fanfiction, Soto was pulling from seven books of information. When Hermione saw Cho Chang, you didn't need any background information on Cho Chang because you already knew a lot about her. In Rose in Chains, Briony would see an old classmate, and it has little to no emotional impact because you have no background information on that person.
-In tandem with that point, there were so many character names. In the fanfiction that was fine because you had seven books to become familiar with these people. In Rose in Chains, you get hit with a ton of names and I kept flipping back and forth to figure out who they were until I finally gave up and figured I'd know who the most important ones were.
-I did not like Briony's brother or father at all - to the point where I wondered if maybe I wasn't meant to. I guess as the series progresses I can come back to this point and see if that's what Soto had in mind all along.
-The Voldemort stand in, Mallow, is a woman. At first I thought that was an interesting change, but by the end I just absolutely could not buy that a government system that had a woman at the head and many other women in power would have sex slaves that are out in the open and approved of as part of that system. I think you would only really see that in an extremely patriarchal society where women are not in positions of power.
-I felt like the school system in this world could have been better fleshed out. It didn't follow any school time convention we are used to in the real world, so I think a chart would have been nice to show what year they were in, what age they were, and where they were so I wasn't having to constantly do math in my head or look for context clues to ground myself in the flashbacks.
-Finally, I would have loved more time with Toven and Briony in flashbacks. I assumed that would be a big part of why this was a trilogy because a lot more time would need to be spent establishing the connection between these two characters before everything falls apart. I felt like it was a real missed opportunity to not play in that sandbox more. Briony tells you at one point "he flirted with me all that year in such and such class" and I'm like "Yes, please! Show me that!" Now I'm unsure why this is going to be a trilogy. Soto may convince me otherwise, but right now I think this should be a duology at most.

All in all, I think this was a solid start to the trilogy, and I have high hopes that the next two will be even better now that the story has started.

Came for the Dramonie references stayed for the Dramonie references.
This was everything that was promised and more. Were there a few chapters I skimmed? Maybe but just because I was rushing to finish!! It was so good.

Out of all the books I’ve read and reviewed this year. This book in particular is the one I’m most nervous to review. You may be asking yourself, why are you so nervous it’s just another Romantasy book?!? Well in case you’ve been living under a rock this isn’t just any Romantasy book (at least according to my TikTok and Instagram feed) Nooooo this is the most anticipated Romantasy book of 2025. And for some early reviewers their favorite book of 2025. Sadly I’m here to report that I’m in the minority. I actually really hated this book. And I think the internet has lost its marbles with this one.

Before we dive in I do have to admit I’d never read the Auction before. And if my research is correct this book was originally written as Dramine Fan-Fiction under that name. I believe it got re-worked and then picked up by a publisher. PS if I’m not correct please feel free to let me know but that’s what I’ve gathered from BookTok. So because I never read the Auction. I had no prior knowledge of the plot or characters. Nor did I have any prior warning of the giant red flags this book contains. So please fellow readers check your Trigger Warnings before tackling this book. I made that mistake and was completely blindsided. It was so bad that several moments in this book made me sick to my stomach and had me questioning if I could actually continue reading. I hadn’t felt that disgusted reading a book since I tried reading Hunting Adeline if you need a book equivalent comparison.

If those scenes weren’t bad enough there were other major issues I had throughout the entire book. The politics and magic system for me were extremely hard to follow. It didn’t help that we also had several flashbacks throughout the story. So just when I thought I was starting to get a handle on the magic system and political agenda we’d be thrown into a flashback. Causing the story to be disjointed and disrupted the narrative flow.

My other big issue falls with the characters themselves. Specifically our main characters Toven & Briony. These two felt so flat and one dimensional. Even the supposed “steamy” scenes lacked any real chemistry. And to all the early reviewers that are saying this is the best romance they’ve read y’all are a bunch of big fat liars. Like did we honestly read the same book, because I didn’t see any romance transpiring between those two.

Sadly, I don’t have a ton of positives to say. Honestly the only thing that kept me reading this book was for the Marrow our main lead villain. Which honestly surprises the heck out of me. But in terms of horrible villains she’s up there. However, she’s so incredibly well written that even though you hate her you can’t stop yourself from reading about her.

Overall, sadly this book is not for me and I can’t in good conscience recommend it. Nor will I be continuing on with this series. Which sucks because I was highly anticipating this and I’ve enjoyed Julie Soto’s previous romcoms. Regretfully this wasn’t for me. Lastly I want to say a big thank you to Forever Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC.

Just finished this and I am NOT okay after that ending!! I need more as soon as possible please. I really enjoyed this and thought it was so so good!! I loved the tension and the magic and so many things!! I am giving this 4.5 because I thoroughly enjoyed it!! Thank you so much to Forever for allowing me to read this early!!

Rose in Chains was one of my most anticipated reads of the year, and I was absolutely thrilled to receive an ARC!! I went into it with high hopes and a lot of curiosity, especially knowing its roots in the Dramione fandom.
The first half of the book was a bit of a struggle for me. The world-building felt dense, and there were just so many characters and pieces of information thrown in early on. It made it hard to fully connect or settle into the story, and it definitely slowed down my reading pace. But once everything started to click into place and the characters were firmly established, the narrative found its rhythm. That’s when I really started to enjoy it.
There’s definitely something sentimental about knowing its origin as a Dramione fic, and I have to admit that knowledge carried a lot of weight in how I connected with the story. Part of me wonders how differently I’d feel if I didn’t have that context; I’m not sure it would have landed quite the same way for me without it. That said, by the end, I was invested enough that I know I’ll continue with the series. I’m hopeful it will only get stronger from here.
It’s a complicated one to rate because it left me both intrigued and a little unsure. I think fans of Dramione or those familiar with fanfiction will feel that extra layer of depth, but new readers may find the beginning a bit overwhelming. Still, it has a lot of potential, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes next!

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!
Rose in Chains was my first Julie Soto read—and it may also be my last. While there were glimmers of potential in the world and magic system, the overall experience left me feeling underwhelmed and slightly frustrated.
The story leans heavily into a familiar formula, one I’ve seen in dozens of fantasy books before. Was it entertaining at times? Sure. But beneath the surface, it lacked real substance. The auction plotline felt unnecessary and disconnected—almost like a gimmick—when the story could have instead focused on the much more compelling backdrop of a brewing war that would have added tension, stakes, and a deeper emotional investment.
The pacing also didn’t help. The first 40% dragged with little to hold my attention. The protagonist, while technically imprisoned, experiences her so-called “captivity” in a cozy, almost privileged way. Meanwhile, her friends endure unimaginable suffering—yet this contrast is barely explored. It felt emotionally unbalanced.
The worldbuilding? Underdeveloped. The heart and head magic system had promise—it was one of the few unique elements—but sadly, it wasn’t given the depth or exploration it deserved. The rebellion, a critical part of the plot, happens mostly in the background, stripping it of real tension or urgency.
The romance is a slow burn, but not in a satisfying way—it feels like it’s being stretched thin just to justify a series. Toven and his family, a potential emotional anchor, made little sense in their motivations or impact. Overall, the it felt like the author kept changing her mind on what happens next but played it off like the characters just changed their minds. Some might call it organic. I’d call it unorganized.
What did I enjoy? The concept had potential. The world had the vibe of something great—maybe a little Fourth Wing-adjacent in tone—but the execution just didn’t land. With tighter plotting and a stronger focus on either the war, the magic, or the emotional depth of the rebellion, this could’ve been a standout. Instead, it felt like it got lost in trying to be something bigger than it was ready to be.

(4.5/5) I can ALWAYS count on Julie Soto to make me crazily blush when reading one of her books. Rose in Chains was no exception.

Let me preface this book review with I have never read Dramione fanfic (including The Auction), but I am a huge Julie Soto fan.

Overall, this is an amazing romantasy debut. Julie Soto delivers a complex post-war world, a powerful FMC, a well-done past x present timeline, mystery & secrets, and TENSION GALORE.

60% into this book, I was bought in and couldn't put it down. The slow burn is SLOWWWWWWW, but I was blushing so hard at multiple scenes that my husband had to ask me what I was reading.

I will say, I struggled with the world building of this book. It almost felt like Julie Soto was assuming I knew more about the world than I did. I had to go back a few times thinking I missed something.

That being said, I am looking forward to seeing how she further develops this world and magic system. I will ABSOLUTELY be continuing this series.

Devastated this is book #1 and not a complete story — but wow, what an interesting magic system and character study! Can’t wait for book #2.

Though I can feel the essence of the original fan fiction and inspiring work in the characters, this new world and plot has eons of creativity. Highly recommend!