Dragon Rose By Christine Pope

 "For the first time, I understood reality could be so much lovelier than dreams"

Dragon Rose is a book from the Tales of the Latter Kingdoms series by Christine Pope.
If you like re-telling of classic Disney stories but with a new twist then this series is something you should definitely have a look at.  

At the beginning of the book we meet Rhianne, the eldest of 4 daughters who is being courted by a much older man, hoping she will marry him.
Her mother thinks this is a good suit for her daughter, but Rhianne has different ideas. 
Selflessly saving her best friend from a marriage to the Dragon of Black's Keep, Rhianne offers herself as his bride.

There are lots of stories about how the Lord of Black's keep became a dragon, everyone knows he was cursed, but no one knows why or how to break the curse. 

Will Rhianne be the one to break it? Or will she perish like his many brides before her? 

"No, Rhianne" he exclaimed, and his arms tightened around me. "Fight it. You must fight it, my darling."

Christine Pope keeps you immersed in this story with great characters and a story line that will have you hooked. 

Her writing keeps the book flowing at a great pace and doesn't go to heavy into things that will never concern the character again.

As much as Lord Theran, the Dragon of Black's Keep is a private character you feel you get to know him well enough to want him to get his happy ending, but he is still held back from the reader a great deal so to keep the mystery surrounding him and his curse.

The only thing I would have liked to have seen more of was the Dragon form itself, it appears only twice in the whole book and only for a paragraph or two at most. The rest is Theran in his human form.
Also the only interaction Rhianne and Theran had was when they had dinner together at night. It would have been interesting to see the characters together in a different inviroment. 
at the end you never hear what happens to the servants with their new Lord and how they have reacted, which would also have been nice to see. 

Over all it was an very enjoyable read and I am certainly going to be picking up the other stories in this collection!