Review: A Rose of Blood and Binding: The Middlemist Trilogy, Book 3 by Claire Legrand

A Rose of Blood and Binding: The Middlemist Trilogy, Book 3 by Claire Legrand
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was provided an ALC of this book via Netgalley, all opinions are my own.

This is the conclusion to the Middlemist Trilogy, and while each book follows a different sister, I don't feel like you can read them as standalones.  The main plotline is interwoven between the three books and to truly understand what is going on you would need to start at the beginning.  Now if you are only interested in Mara and her part of the story you could get away with reading them individually as there is enough info to fill in the blanks about what is happening and the main storyline follows Mara and her journey.

Mara has been portrayed as a brave and strong warrior in the previous two books, but in this installment we find that she has a lot of feelings about being sent away at a young age to train with the Roses.  The Roses are a band of female warriors secluded from their families who train hard and protect the realm from the mysterious mist and the creatures that it hides.  They are ruled by the Warden who is not only their keeper, but also like a mother to them though she is harsh a ruthless at times.  We come to learn that Mara has been made to do things as Rose that she feels quite a lot of guilt about, and she uses pain and sex to ease her feelings of shame and inadequacy.  The also has a lot of thoughts of ending her own life so trigger warnings for suicide as it is mentioned quite a lot.  Mara has a lot of self hatred to work through and while Gareth her love interest tries to help her through it, it overwhelmed the storyline in my opinion.

We do reunite with Mara's family, her sisters, their partners, her parents, and many other key players we have met along the way to thwart the antagonist.  The magic and worldbuilding were as always really interesting.  Legrand always does a great job with those.  Gareth and Mara's characters eventually get together and when they do there are plenty of scenes to solidify their love, Legrand's books are always full of those as well.  I didn't always feel their chemistry, especially with Mara always pushing him away.

Overall this was a good conclusion to the series.

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