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My Review:Title: Eyes of Ember
Author: Rebecca Ethington
Series: Imdalind #2
Published by: Indie
Release Date: April 1, 2013
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 418
Genres: Paranormal Romance, Young Adult
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's COYER Summer Hunt
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ IndieBound ✩ Book Depository
My rating:
Blurb:I kissed my best friend…… and now he is trying to kill me.
I loved Ryland LaRue from the moment I knew what love was. I loved him so much I risked everything to save him. That risk exploded just like his house, and took pretty much everyone I cared about with it.
Including him.
Now, my best friend, my first love, and I guess my magical-soul-bonding-husband is hunting me. Yes, hunting me. Full-on attack mode. Edmund, wants me dead, and now that Ryland is under his control, he wants me dead too.
Awesome.
I would probably be dead already if Ilyan wasn’t protecting me. Or rather, subjecting me to the ultimate house-arrest. Even that isn’t enough. It’s not me that’s in trouble after all, it’s my mind. How can you protect your mind from the attack of someone you can’t even see?
Cue the two guys that Ilyan has been hiding inside a freakin’ mountain. Everyone has their secrets, it seems.
One of these days all of those secrets are going to get me killed. Why? Because I guess I’m the freaking Silny now.
I think I’ve had enough of secrets.
ON REREAD:
3.5 stars — This review is going to be a bit all over the place…sorry.
I got the updated version of this book (after contacting Amazon and getting them to force it), and so was expecting a cleaner version. But it was not. This book was most certainly not proofed/line edited, b/c it was still relatively bad. The dialogue tags were rarely right, some words were clearly wrong, and beyond that there were inconsistencies in my opinion (either that or it was just badly explained). I felt like the beginning and end matched with how time worked in the Touha, but in the middle I felt like it was flipped. Maybe it was just me, but I have an eye for these things, so maybe not? Bummer either way.
The first half was still super slow and almost repetitive for me. I feel like the plot could have been tightened up a great deal. It was really the second half that took off and went apeshit nuts. I will also admit that there were bits of the plot/explanations that I still don’t understand. Sometimes it felt like Joclyn would figure something out, but I, as the reader, still had no idea…and I *hate* that. Probably not on purpose, but seriously, this books needs another set of eyes.
The psychological games of the second half were UNREAL. It made me feel like I was crazy reading it too. Really well done and effecting.
Joclyn bothers me a bit, b/c she makes the dumbest decisions and doesn’t seem to learn. On one hand I get it, she’s only like 16 and has been thrust into this situation, but on the other hand it makes me want to give up on her.
She’s also a really unreliable narrator! I don’t get her aversion to touch all the time, and Ilyan’s continued touching even when she obviously shied away made me SUPER UNCOMFORTABLE. I noticed it in the first book, and it bothered me then too. I’m not sure what the purpose of all that is, but it made it hard to like Ilyan because he was obviously not respecting her boundaries AT ALL. But the funny thing is that I did end up feeling for Ilyan in the end…I did end up liking him. But I sincerely wish that Ms. Ethington had done better with all of that, and maybe given us a freaking explanation.
I will admit that this bait and switch thing is not endearing to me. I hate feeling so much for one thing only to have the rug taken out from underneath me. But at the same time it has me on the edge of my seat wanting more. GAH! Fingers crossed that things start to balance off in the next books.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
4 stars — WOW. I think I’m still recovering from that ending…. It started out kind of slower, and so I noticed more of the writing idiosyncrasies that jumped out at me during the reread of Kiss of Fire…. It’s so unfortunate, b/c seriously, Ms. Ethington just KILLS on plot, characters, emotion….but some of the phrases she uses just don’t make sense and it can take me out of the book at times. I kept thinking I had to find an example so people wouldn’t think I was crazy and could decide for themselves if it’s something that would bother them. I finally found a great one in the climax — “I cringed away from Cail’s brittle breath in my nostrils.” It’s not that it’s horrible, it’s just the kind of thing that grates on me….*sigh* OK, got that out of the way….(the example was the worst offender by the way, they weren’t all that bad — just some weird word choices)
Now, the awesomeness. Again, it started out slower, but I hit about 40% and I couldn’t put the book down from then on. I have mixed feelings about Joclyn, and was so wondering how the whole Ilyan thing was going to play out but I really liked what Ms. Ethington did with it. I was worried it would be love triangley, but it wasn’t bad at all. LOVED Dramin…he was so freaking adorable!! Thom confuses me. Ovalia…I mean seriously, how can Ilyan put up with that and not be suspicious? Oh god, and then the Cail stuff….GAH! I think I still feel a little off b/c I was so sucked in, and now I want to twitch and stutter all over the place. I can say I am honestly looking forward to the book from Wyn’s perspective in particular. I have so many more questions about Sain, and then wanting to know what was happening to Ryland, b/c wow…that just went completely in a direction I didn’t expect. Basically, the slower start had me a bit concerned, but then Ms. Ethington scored the touchdown….way to hit it out of the park and every other lame sports metaphor I can think of. That was a wild ride to the finish. Can’t wait for more in this world….July can’t come soon enough.
COYER Summer Hunt: Celebrate 2019 – read a book that’s number in the series can be made from only the numbers in 2019 — 3 points.
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