The following two books are more closely related to their folkloric sources, much darker (most early, unedited versions of fairy tales were plenty dark -- see Opie and Opie's The Classic Fairy Tales Oxford Univ. Press, 1974), and much less about romantic interplay between a couple. In Watching the Roses, Alice's pricking comes not in the form of a spindle, but at the hands of a rapist during her 18^th birthday party, at her parents estate, surrounded by rose gardens. As with Lisa in John Marsden's Take My Word for It, the silent withdrawn Alice works through her trauma by writing about it, the rose garden around her being a reflection of the damage to her spirit. The arrival and caring, considerate behaviour of her French boyfriend and pen-pal finally snaps her out of her living death. In this sense, Watching the Roses, -- perhaps more appropriate for older readers than the two other titles -- is perhaps the best of the three in terms of recasting the older tale in a modern context.

In Pictures of the Night the third girl, Bella, is apparently the victim of attempts on her life, and her jealous step-mother, Marjorie, may be behind it. A talented singer, Bella spends her summer in the Bohemian quarter of London with her musician boyfriend and six other band members, all of whom somewhat shield her from danger. But in the end, many elements of the story, including a mysterious white cat, remain dangling, Bella solves her situation to some extent by returning evil for evil, and the three girls end up going off to live happily ever after with their princes, perhaps what one should expect from fairy-tale-derived material, but which seems somewhat at odds with darker nature of the last two books. This leaves this book somewhat weaker than its predecessors, with neither the overt romanticism of The Tower Room, or the sad poignancy of Watching the Roses

Alice's rape in Watching the Roses is well handled, contextual, and while the episode is perhaps better suited to older readers, it didn't really raise my hackles -- this is, after all the 21^st century. However, while all the girls are described as having reached the age of majority, the relationships of Megan and Bella with men clearly older than themselves might raise some eyebrows, though certainly nothing exploitative is depicted. Still this element left me, no prude, somewhat uneasy. Similarly, the element of the act of intercourse in The Tower Room, however mildly depicted, seemed to mar the quasi-Victorian æsthetic set up to that point. Yes, I realize young women have been sexually active from well before the Epic of Gilgamesh was put to tablet, but particularly in The Tower Room it just seemed unnecessary. A similar comment: "and yet Geras throws in some very inappropriate sexual content that just bugged me" was used to describe Geras' Troy, and while most other reader/reviewers did not see this as an issue, I feel somewhat vindicated in seeing that I'm not the only one to be uneasy about this element in Geras' work. This said, the books are well written, the characters well depicted, so perhaps they will appeal more strongly and be more appreciated by today's young woman than an old curmudgeon like me.