The Dark Rose is the story of how the lives of two troubled people intersect, with unfortunate results.
Louisa has had a secret for 20 years that changed her life. In flashbacks to 1989, she meets Adam, a singer and bassist in a local rock band, and falls immediately in love. For the first time, she is not the one in charge of her own love life, and he is in turn attentive and evasive, loving and impatient. Louisa is eaten up by jealousy, especially when his band mates make jokes about his relationships with other women. No good comes of this situation.
In the present time, 19-year-old Paul has been forced to testify against his friend Daniel. They have a long-standing friendship that Paul has been wanting to escape. As boys Daniel protected Paul from bullies while Paul kept others from finding out that Daniel was illiterate. But Daniel’s father is a criminal, and Daniel has begun involving Paul in illegal activities just as Paul is trying to begin a new life at university.
While he awaits Daniel’s trial, Paul is sent out of the area for his own protection to help with a project restoring a Tudor garden to its former glory. On site he meets Louisa, the head gardener, who is struck by Paul’s resemblance to her long lost love.
Kelly does a good job of keeping up the suspense, telling the interleaved stories of the young Louisa from 20 years before and of Paul’s more recent history. Although you become aware that each story involves some horrendous event, she spins out her tale so that events are revealed toward the end of the novel. Still, all is not over.
I found The Dark Rose less satisfying than The Poison Tree, Kelly’s debut. Paul and Louisa are definitely more flawed and less likable than the previous book’s heroine. Still, we want to find out what happens to them.
Erin Kelly has been likened to Gillian Flynn or Tana French. I am always skeptical of such comparisons (“If you like so-and-so, you’ll love . . .”), and I prefer the work of Flynn and French. However, Kelly does have a comparable dark sensibility. I just think Flynn and French are better at getting you to sympathize with their main characters, even though they are invariably flawed (except for Gone Girl, that is, where no characters are sympathetic).
A warning about this book if you shop in used book stores. I bought it a second time by accident because the British edition is under a different title, The Sick Rose.
What? Me Read? 
Very interesting…this is definitely my kind of book, and now it’s useful to know about the author comparisons. I have not read Erin Kelly, and the only book I’ve read by Gillian Flynn is Gone Girl. Do you recommend Flynn’s other books? I’ll look up Kelly.
I especially recommend Flynn’s Sharp Objects. I think it is better than Gone Girl. It’s just that Gone Girl had that twist people didn’t expect.
That’s good to know! I enjoyed Gone Girl but not as much as the general public seemed to have liked it.
It’s very dark. I liked the twist, but I prefer some of her books where the heroine is more likeable, although she does have a tendency toward heroines who are damaged.
Yes, Amy (?) in Gone Girl was just impossible to take!
This one sounds like it would make my TR list, but would linger at the end for a long time. Interesting, though!
It also took me awhile to get to it.