Champion Rose by Laura E. Williams

Champion Rose by Laura E. Williams

My rating: ★★☆☆☆

The first few books of this series were quite childish, more so than is warranted given their 7+ age recommendation. As the series progressed, however, the authors got their act together and realized that you don’t need to write down to children, and I certainly appreciated that. (It made revisiting this childhood memory far less painful than I worried it might be.)

Unfortunately, L.E. Wiliams must not yet have realized that lesson when she wrote this installment. There’s a lot of “tell” instead of “show” and a lot of stereotyped and over-exaggeratedly “childish” comments and worries. It’s not unforgivable by any means, but it definitely has a somewhat condescending sense toward its intended demographic that seriously grates the nerves of its peripheral audience.

If this was her first installment in the series, I’ll forgive it completely; the other authors went through the same trial-and-error method with their writing styles for the series. But as far as determining the order of the post-Trapped books… so many of these were released in such a short time period that the publication dates aren't particularly helpful (and many of them are either missing or guesswork in the first place), and there’s not a lot of information available on this series, so I’m rather out of luck with trying to find out if this is actually Rose’s first appearance as a main character. I’ll be reading a few more of her installments when I get the chance, and I definitely hope to see Williams’ voice improve; otherwise, I have to say I'll be disappointed.