Ivy Benton wears a tiara that itches and a smile that lies. She kisses a husband whose skin runs cold as room air, plots his ruin in stolen moments, and swallows down the knowledge that the boy she loves is locked away somewhere beyond a door she cannot open. Sasha Peyton Smith opens her sequel with the pressure already at the bursting point, and she keeps the screws tight for nearly four hundred pages. This is The Thorn Queen by Sasha Peyton Smith, the second book in The Rose Bargain duology, and it is darker, lusher, and meaner than its predecessor in all the ways the first book hinted it might be.
Where We Are in the Series
The Rose Bargain saga is now complete as a two-book set:
- The Rose Bargain (Book 1): Ivy enters Queen Mor’s bargain-driven competition for the hand of King Bram and the consequences spiral past her control.
- The Thorn Queen (Book 2): Four months into that marriage, those consequences come back with claws.
You absolutely need book one before you open book two. Smith does not stop to remind you of who slept with whom or who betrayed whom, and the emotional weight of every reunion in this sequel rests on the foundation of The Rose Bargain. Reading them out of order would gut the experience.
The Setup, Spoiler-Free
Ivy is now the public face of Bram’s reign, locked into the lavish horror of his winter court at Bath’s Royal Crescent. The fae have been let loose on England, and they treat humans the way bored children treat butterflies. When a thread of opportunity opens to reach the Otherworld, Ivy takes it, and what she finds there reshapes everything she thought she was fighting to win back. Lydia is not the sister she remembers. Emmett is not the boy she left. And Ivy, after four months of acting the dutiful queen, may not be the girl either of them expects to find.
That is the most a fair review can say. The big swings of The Thorn Queen by Sasha Peyton Smith deserve to land cold on the reader, the way Smith intended.
What Sasha Peyton Smith Gets Beautifully Right
Atmosphere Like Honey Poured Over Bone
Smith’s Otherworld is sticky, sensual, and faintly rotten. There is a constant tactile pressure to her writing: pomegranate seeds squashed under a gloved palm, crusts of damp prison bread, ribbons of confetti tangled in a tiara, fuchsia vials of laced wine, a girl in a deer mask scrambling around a bonfire while courtiers laugh. The beautiful and the sickening sit side by side on the same page. She refuses to let you choose which to look at, and the book is stronger for it.
A Romance With Real Wounds
The Ivy-Emmett reunion is the throbbing heart of the book, and Smith treats it with more nerve than most YA fantasy authors would dare. Emmett has spent two years believing Ivy is dead. Ivy has spent four months living in service to his memory. The two people who walked into Bram’s marriage trap are not the same two people who must now learn to recognize each other again. There is no swoon-and-resolve. There is awkwardness, doubt, jealousy, and a long stretch of the book where Emmett cannot bring himself to look Ivy in the eye. Smith earns the eventual softness by refusing to skip the hard parts.
Sisters at the Center of Everything
The most surprising relationship in The Thorn Queen by Sasha Peyton Smith is between Ivy and Lydia. Their reunion is jealous, fond, prickly, and full of the small cruelties only sisters can deliver. Lydia has changed. So has Ivy. Smith writes their power struggle without cheapening either girl, and the result is one of the more grown-up portraits of sisterhood in current YA romantasy.
A Court Designed to Provoke
Bram’s revels are theatrical setpieces. Smith uses them to display systemic cruelty, with humans treated as toys, livestock, and party favors. There is something pointed about staging this in 1848 England, where Bath’s Royal Crescent becomes a literal pleasure palace and British aristocrats cluster around the new monsters because monsters are fashionable. Smith has clearly thought about why the fae would find Victorian high society such tasty prey.
Where the Book Stumbles
For all its strengths, The Thorn Queen by Sasha Peyton Smith is not a flawless sequel, and the four-star reader average feels honest.
A handful of issues worth flagging:
- A sagging middle. After the early Bath chapters, the book spends a long stretch in the Otherworld setting up rules, alliances, and side quests. Some of this worldbuilding pays off. Some of it slows the plot to a crawl.
- A conveniently placed ally. A faerie character’s loyalties shift just often enough to rescue the heroes from corners they could not realistically escape on their own. As a romance subplot, it works. As a tactical engine, it strains belief.
- Tonal whiplash. Smith asks the reader to hold corseted manners, faerie horror, intoxicated revel scenes, and political treaty drafting in the same chapter. The transitions between these registers are not always smooth.
- Multi-POV breakages. Cuts to Emmett, Lydia, and Faith add useful information, but they sometimes interrupt Ivy’s momentum at the worst possible moment.
None of these are fatal. They are the kind of cracks that a tighter edit could have sealed.
Voice and Style
Smith writes Ivy in a sharp, slightly sardonic first person that softens around Emmett and turns brittle around Bram. The prose is more restrained than your average romantasy doorstopper. She does not drown you in adjectives. She trusts the reader to feel the weight of a kiss without having it announced. That restraint pays off in the quieter scenes, especially the ones between sisters, where what is unsaid matters more than what gets shouted.
If you loved Smith’s debut series The Witch Haven, you will recognize her interest in girls forced to choose between safety and power. That preoccupation runs even harder through this duology.
Who This Book Is For
You will likely love The Thorn Queen by Sasha Peyton Smith if you:
- Loved The Rose Bargain and want a darker, sharper continuation.
- Enjoy slow burn that involves real apologies, not magical resets.
- Want sister relationships built on rivalry as well as devotion.
- Like fantasy that takes period detail and Victorian manners seriously.
You may want to skip it if:
- You have not read book one yet.
- You dislike on-page revel content with drugs, blood, and explicit longing.
- You prefer tightly plotted political fantasy to emotional courtroom drama.
Books to Read After The Thorn Queen by Sasha Peyton Smith
If this duology hit the right notes, try:
- Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber, for the same dreamy fae register.
- Belladonna by Adalyn Grace, for gothic, poison-soaked romance.
- The Cruel Prince by Holly Black, for sharper teeth in a faerie court.
- A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid, for atmospheric folkloric romance with a bookish heroine.
- Foul Lady Fortune by Chloe Gong, for sweeping period fantasy with high stakes.
- Heartless Hunter by Kristen Ciccarelli, for forbidden love across enemy lines.
Smith’s earlier title The Witch Haven and its sequel The Witch Hunt are also worth picking up for readers who want more of her voice once the duology is finished.
Final Word
The Thorn Queen by Sasha Peyton Smith is not a perfect sequel, but it is an ambitious and emotionally honest one. Smith took the cruel ending of book one and built a story that takes those consequences seriously, refuses to let her heroine off easy, and makes the reader care just as much about a sisterhood as a romance. If you came to this duology for the thrones and the kisses, you will get them. If you came for something a little more wounded and grown up, you will find that here too. It is a fitting close to The Rose Bargain story, sharp enough to draw blood and soft enough to leave a mark.