A White Rose by Yash Sharma (BOOK REVIEW) 2/5
As a short story, this novel works decently enough. But for me personally, I can’t say it was an enjoyable read. Told in a mixture between a folktale, fairy tale, and fantasy, A White Rose is a quick read about a man’s journey to find a white rose for his ailing daughter. The editor in me stumbled a few times in this book, finding a good handful of grammatical errors, and moreso, unusual word placement that left certain sentences reading funny- occasionally in a Yoda-esque style that might have been an attempt to sound more folk-y, but ended up being distracting and unpleasant. As I have not read any of Mr. Sharma’s other works, I can’t say whether that is his style as a writer, or just this novel alone.
The story itself, I found to be on the poor side of storytelling. Lacking significant character description besides the races of “elf” or “wizard”, which I count to be a staple of fantasy, it was hard to picture the characters with any sort of depth, or to gather feelings for their struggles. I was struck over the head as I entered the novel, abruptly, into a chapter full of crying and tears, of grief that I couldn’t connect to and not well written enough to be enjoyable. But I held on, with hope that the story would improve. Only, as I read, I found myself often dragged back and forth in confusion of what was happening. Certain abrupt moments- like a character death- felt unexplained and out of place, not holding the shock value it should have. And the novel itself was over all disjointed, all over the place.
The end, though I won’t spoil it, ends in an unsettling, confused manner, an attempt at a cliffhanger perhaps? But I wasn’t interested enough to think too long on it, and it didn’t pack the punch an ending should.
Because of the solid story idea- even if poorly executed- and the quality of the physical copy, I give this a 2 out of 5 stars. I’m sorry I can’t give it more than that. I think Mr. Sharma is an incredible young writer, with a lot of room to grow- and someday, he’ll produce amazing work, but I don’t think he hit the mark with this one.