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Romance. Young Adult Fiction. Young Adult Literature. HTML: A realistic, fast-paced reimagining of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale full of royalty, romance, and danger. This masterful combination of love and heartbreak�??combined with the novel's surprise ending�??is everything fans of fantasy, historical, and medieval fiction yearn for. Rose has been appointed as a healer's apprentice at Hagenheim Castle, a rare opportunity for a woodcutter's daughter like her. While she often feels uneasy at the sight of blood, Rose is determined to prove herself capable. Failure will mean returning home to marry the aging bachelor her mother has chosen for her�??a bloated, disgusting merchant who makes Rose feel ill. When Lord Hamlin, the future duke, is injured, it is Rose who must tend to him. As she works to heal his wound, she begins to understand emotions she's never felt before and wonders if he feels the same. But falling in love is forbidden, as Lord Hamlin is betrothed to a mysterious young woman in hiding. As Rose's life spins toward confusion, she must take the first steps on a journey to discover her own destiny. The Healer's Apprentice: An award-winning historical romance�??a creative retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale�??by author Melanie Dickerson Perfect for readers ages 13-18 and adults who enjoy historical romances similar to Eva Ibbotson's A romantic, fast-paced read�??sure to entrance fans of fairytal… (more)
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Update: I finished and I liked it. It was cheesy, it was fluffy, but sometimes you just need a cheesy,
This is the story of Rose. Rose is apprenticed to the Healer of the realm. When the Duke's sons come for a visit; both of them are drawn to her beauty. Rose knows her place in the realm and, as a Healer's Apprentice, does not want the attention of either brother. When one of the brothers, Wilhelm, is injured Rose heals him. Wilhelm and Rose are drawn to each other's personalities, but it cannot be. Wilhelm is betrothed to a Princess whose identity will not be revealed until the evil mage is defeated. Meanwhile Wilhelm's younger brother, a rogue of sorts, has started courting Rose. Wilhelm struggles to keep his feelings for Rose under wraps while trying to hunt down the evil mage that plagues the realm.
This book started out pretty good. It had a lot of a fairy tale feel to it, with a definite German tone. You can't help but love the characters in the beginning they are all so sweet, pure, and innocent. Rose is determined to be good and to have a life as a healer. Rose can get to be a little much at points; she is pure to the point of not exposing her arms, not touching a man's hand, or wearing makeup. But that seemed to be mostly cultural, so went well with the story. The writing is fairly well done and engaging; there are beautiful descriptions but the dialogue between characters is a bit stilted. I was really enjoying this as a sweet historical romance with a bit of a fantasy flare to it...then we get to the second half of the book.
Keep in mind I did not know this book was released by a christian fiction publisher, so readers beware. As the book continues God is mentioned a lot (I mean a lot a lot) and scripture is quoted. Wilhelm is especially religious; all of which I don't have a problem with. The problem comes in when the characters decide to stop taking action and sit on their bums praying for God to save them. I was like "what is going on here?"..."Why are these wonderful characters waiting around for God to do their work for them rather than taking positive action themselves?"
Then suddenly things get even stranger; Rose is haunted by demons and speaking in tongues. Wilhelm enters to save the day by using his power as a Duke to cast the evil forces out of his realm in God's name. It all got very weird, was very predictable, and made me very uncomfortable. I couldn't figure out why the author would drop such a sweet positive story and turn it into some weird parable of religious text.
Overall I loved the beginning of this book. The characters are positive, sweet, and likable. The romance between Rose and Wilhelm is well-founded and they have great chemistry together. I hated the ending of the book, I thought the overpowering use of God as a solution to the characters problems and Wilhelm's sudden ability to make use of divine intervention were strange and distasteful. So just be warned; this is a Christian fantasy and gets very preachy towards the end of the book. If that's not your thing pick up a different book with sweet characters and wonderful romance; I recommend Crown Duel by Sherwood Smith or The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley. This book is appropriate for all young adults and older.
And I really love a good fairy tale. This was a good fairy tale and its based (loosely) on the Sleeping Beauty tale. It is the story of a poor woodcutter's daughter who is now an apprentice to the court's healer woman. Rose gains the interest of two brothers. The eldest, Lord Hamlin, is next in line to the throne. He is kind and has a great love of God and his people. Rupert, the younger brother, is a cad with a horrible reputation of loving and leaving the ladies. Although Rose loves Hamlin, she knows he is betrothed to marry a quality woman who is in hiding from a wicked man who threatened her with a curse. Lord Hamlin also fights his attraction to Rose.
In the meantime, Rose tries to convince herself Rupert is the one for her. Because he isn't in line for the throne, it is feasible that he may ask her to marry him. And what girl wouldn't want this catch?
There ends up being a lovely mystery involved, easy to solve, but still quite charming. Rose is a delightful character. She prays throughout the book and I really liked this about her. There were a few nice little twists, or side stories, that kept the book flowing. I didn't want to stop once I had started the tale.
I did find it somewhat annoying at the end of the book at how things were resolved. I thought the book ended up a little too much on the preachy side when the theme of God and his path for your life was perfect through the first portion of the story. It was there but it wasn't too preachy. The end was out there. The last third or fourth of the book was weird. The fabulous characters really didn't take action. Others have said it on their reviews and I hoped they were exhauggerated but nope. They just prayed and prayed and didn't take any kind of action.
I talked about this with my husband and he said it reminded him of the story that tells about a stranded man at sea. He could drown or starve but he has much faith in God to save him. Two or three boats come across the man and ask him if he wants a ride and the man declines saying "Nope, God will save me". So the man drowns. When he reaches Heaven he said "God, why didn't you answer my prayers?" and God says "Well I sent three boats to save you!".
I believe God is a guiding hand in our life, as the book states. However, its ridiculous to not work with God and use our free will to help ourselves.
Even with this complaint I can't give the book less that four stars. I truly found it deightful. And of course its clean and sweet and perfect for your younger teens to enjoy as well.
4Q, 4P; Cover Art: Okay.
This book is best suited for middleschoolers on up.
It was selected due to the interesting title and the intriguing summary on the back.
Grade (of reviewer): 12th
EW-AHS-NC
The true beauty of this story lays in the way it all plays out, so I'm going to try very hard not to divulge the twists and turns it takes. I will confess to having an inkling of a hunch somewhere around chapter 4, but I refused to give in and flip ahead to see if I was "right" or not. So very glad I refrained, because the development of the story was beautiful.
Rose and Wilhelm are appealing characters who rely on their Christian faith to help them choose duty above self-interest which in the end enables them to rejoice when it becomes apparent that they are meant for one another after all. The young adult audience for which this book is intended will delight in the circuitous path the young pair must travel before this title reaches its fairy tale ending.
The story is quite predictable, albeit pleasant. The religious sentiments expressed seemed appropriate for the time (during which religion sat cheek by jowl with older superstitious notions) but the constant pleas directly to God for help seemed a little modern - one would have expected prayers by hoi polloi to go to an intercessor, like a patron saint.
Nevertheless, until the end when a crescendo of religious fervor is reached, the book is appealing, and of course the emphasis on piety (whereby even showing an ankle is considered risqué) assures that it can be read by tweens as well as teens.
Evaluation: The characters are likeable and reasonably nuanced except for the evil conjurer, who is all bad (but possessed by Satanic demons, so nuance would really not be possible). This sweet fairy tale is appropriate for any level of reader.
I may pick it back up again later.
I picked this up because I read a favorable review of one of the author's other inspirational fairy tale retellings, and I decided to start with this one because it was the first. The story, very loosely based on Sleeping Beauty, is pleasant enough, and the author ably incorporates her research on life in the middle ages into the book. There are occasionally places where the characters do or say something that seems a bit modern for their time, but those instances are the exception rather than the rule. My main issue with the book was that I found the plot entirely predictable, and not in a good fairy-tale-retelling way. There's a twist at the end, and I saw it coming from a few chapters in. Even the characters saw it coming, but dismissed it for one reason or another. It seemed entirely too obvious, so I kept reading, thinking that perhaps the author would twist it a different way at the last moment and surprise me . . . but she didn't. Also, the main character has a dog named Wolfie, and for some inexplicable reason, that minor detail irked me all the way through. Wolfie. I just can't.
Well what can I say? She's done it again. I've fallen in love with her writing, her attention to detail, her sickly sweet romance, her historical research and her character developing. Despite the fact it was clear where this would
I've also noticed with both the novels I've read of hers is that the villain is repulsive and ugly physically as well as mentally. To always view the villain as an ugly person is a bit cliched to me and her representation for the characters a little lacking in substance.
Overall though the writing is always a delight to read and her description never fails to impress me, creating a clear and beautiful picture of the world she has created.
It's one of those books you'll read again just because it makes you feel good.
So for me because of the minor criticisms above mentioned she gets four stars for this.
Nice one.
The Healer's Apprentice by Melanie Dickerson is based loosely on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. The story moved very fast in the beginning and right at the end, but for the majority of the time it was well-paced with intriguing characters and an engrossing story that felt original in spite of its fairy tale basis.
The Healer's Apprentice is marketed as Young Adult reading and had definite YA overtones that were mixed with Middle Age Catholicism. I was creeped out by the strange pagan rituals and demonic possession scene. Had I known those were in the book, I wouldn't have read it. Given its Sleepy Beauty basis, I suppose this shouldn't have been as surprising to me as it was. With an obvious Catholic/Christian perspective, the name of Jesus prevails over the demons. However, for me, that didn't negate the disturbing scenes. Had that part of the fairy tale been creatively changed somehow, I probably would have given this book a five star rating. The creepiness factor brings it down to three. The Healer's Apprentice is well-written and engaging, but I wouldn't read it again or recommend it to any of my friends.
I figured out the twist about halfway
I found the Q and A with Dickerson at the end interesting too. I think she did a much better job of retelling Sleeping Beauty, even though the story only had hints of the original, than Disney did. It stood alone well.
In this sense, The Healer’s Apprentice was satisfying, and in some ways a break from the norm, because the female healer was not accused of witchcraft or heresy as is the common misconception and trope in many fictional stories.
On the simplest level this was a good story, which, aside from the inclusion of the evil magician, stripped away a lot of the fantasy content to create a more historical backdrop for the story of Sleeping Beauty. That may not be according to everyone’s taste, and sometimes the resemblance to the fairy-tale was rather remote, but generally in this story the shifting of the setting to fourteenth century Germany seemed to work.
The element of Romance is arguably, essential to any good fairy-tale, or fairy-tale adaptation, yet I personally have to say I am rather going off romance stories at the moment, especially those of the fluffy, mushy and clichéd kind.
This novel did seem to be an offender with its gorgeous heroine and wonderfully handsome, dashing- and of course muscular hero. In other ways Rose and Wilhelm were strong and interesting characters, but in this way far too typical of the genre.
Perhaps inevitably for the genre, some parts were cliched and some incidents hopelessly convenient or a tad predictable.
Also, their actions were at times frustratingly inconsistent with Rose being madly infatuated with Wilhelm’s brother one minute, then turning round and considering him the most evil person who ever walked the earth the next. Admittedly, she had a reason, was of that invariably capricious breed of people called a teenager.
Her attitude towards her parents I found even harder to swallow. Like with her being convinced that her parents could not possibly have loved her because they sent her away as a child. Or might it not have been because they wanted to protect her from the evil magician intent on subjecting her to a lifetime of torture, the central basis of the plot, and all that?
Even Wilhelm ended up looking down on them as cowardly and selfish for such a thing. I mean seriously, after all they went through, I rather think they ought to have appreciated the reasons for Rose’s parents’ choice to let her go. But no, all they do is whinge and condemn, making their response seem contrived it itself, and them immature.
Did they learn nothing at all?
Also, a few historical issues perhaps warrant mention- like the suspiciously out of place presence of the American chipmunk in the forests of Medieval Europe, and some elements of what appeared to be modern clichés and judgements. Such as Rose determined to marry for love, rather than practicality, or looking down on those who saw women only as breeding machines, or her being more ‘enlightened’ than the general populace who supposedly attributed almost every ill circumstance to demons.
Altogether The Healers Apprentice was a good and generally clean (aside from the odd kissing scene that verged on the inappropriate- or just tiresome) story for young-adults. Perhaps also in could provide a more wholesome alternative to the fairy tales that present an ambiguous picture of magic as something which can be used for ‘good’. I just prefer my medieval stories with a little more substance.
Set in the 1300's, the story revolves around a young girl named Rose who works as an apprentice to the town healer. She meets Lord Hamlin, a future duke, and develops feelings for him. Sad thing is, she can never have him because he
Lord Hamlin's brother takes an interest in her and she, for awhile, sets her sights on him. After all, if she can't have one, why not the other? But hopes lead to disappointment when she finds out that the brother's intentions are not very honorable. The relationship between them (if you can call it that), comes to a sudden end. She is heartbroken.
But true love wins in the end...as always. That's the way fairy tales are!
I’m gonna stop right there because there is no way I can make this book sound remotely interesting. Given the book’s title, I thought Rose was going to find a conflict between wanting to be with the prince and keeping her apprenticeship. Yet right off the bat, we’re told she doesn’t even like her job. Um. What??? That’s right she gets queasy with the sight of blood and she’s not very good at seeing people get hurt. Which made me go “why the flip flap paddy wack did the Healer see in this inept girl? But then the whole mysterious-long-lost-princess trope shows up and it all clicks into place.
“I’m a silly, insipid, pathetic creature” - Yeah, you kind of are. She’s pretty, well-liked by everyone (except for her mother).
I’m all for the lost/missing princess stories but please make her compelling. Please make her more than a cliched trope. And for the love of GOD pLeaSE give her a better purpose other than to get married and have the prince’s babies.
Rose was pretty bland but so was her love interest. What does Wilhelm even do? Isn’t he supposed to be an important person as the heir to the throne? I don’t know but he does have time to leave for weeks at a time to go looking for the guy who made his betrothed go into hiding.
This book is all show AND tell. It’s absolutely awful. The ending was no better either. Unless you’re into the easy way out and a diabetes inducing sweet happily ever after.