No Rose Without Thorns is a very decent drama thriller suspense story with a show business backdrop. Honestly, for how contemporary the premise is you would expect it to be more popular. The story remains very cohesive, even with surprisingly big directional shifts, sometimes even page by page. It is a somewhat down to earth thriller story with interesting and 'believable' characters, to an extent. The art is also of a very high quality. The main thing that drags it down for me is the potential on display. I enjoyed the way the story remained grounded right to the end, but I would be lyingif I said I didn't vastly prefer the insane psychological aspects. The transitional points were smooth enough to not have this be jarring, but if you take a step back it is like using a very complex formula to get an answer you also could have gotten with simple addition. I feel like this is mostly seen in the character development for the main character. I feel that the story initially goes in a certain direction with this that is very different from the end result. And while this is resolved in an interesting way narratively, it still feels like a directional shift that disregards a part of the initial set up. I also think that structurally the comic is a little bit tedious, there are some standout moments for interesting structure, but most of the time I think the way the story is laid out is so standard that it hurts the enjoyability. Especially since the actual content is pretty much always quite enjoyable. Regardless, this is stilll a very fun and interesting thriller story that is not nearly as edgy as the initial few chapters suggest.