The Jewel (The Lone City #1)

For anyone who lives in The Jewel, it means a life of wealth, luxury, royalty. For girls like Violet, it means a life of servitude away from her family. She was born in The Marsh, the poorest district, and taken from her family to be trained and one day sold to a family in The Jewel to be their surrogate. It doesn’t take her long to see the truth behind the wealthy facade, polite and proper in public and planning downfalls in private. Now the surrogate for the Duchess of the Lake, Violet finds herself falling for the boy hired to be the companion for the Duchess’s niece. If their relationship is discovered, the consequences would be devastating.

This was a book I’ve had on my anticipated reads list for a while and I was happy that it didn’t disappoint. The plot and world-building was really interesting and disturbing, the pacing moved well so I never felt like it was dragging, and I really enjoyed the main character.

Violet was my favourite part of the book. She could have easily decided to throw herself a pity party at what has become her life and I would have completely understood. Instead she found ways to deal and survive. She was smart and caring but could also be impulsive and rebellious, which showed in her actions. The secondary characters were good as well, and some of them I wish we’d gotten to see more of. Violet’s friend Raven who was sold to another house, The Duchess’s son Garnet, Violet’s maid Annabelle, a stylist Lucien, the companion Ash, all characters who added something to the story. Even the ‘evil’ characters like The Duchess showed that they weren’t one dimensional and that they had their own stories that could be revealed.

The concept was easy to understand and the world-building was vivid enough to get a clear picture with the different areas(The Marsh, The Smoke, The Farm, The Bank, The Jewel). The descriptions of life for these girls were appropriately horrifying and the more that was revealed, the more disturbing it got.

The romance was sweet but it did feel a bit fast. In some ways it was understandable that Violet and Ash would latch on to each other given their situations but he was introduced late in the book and soon after, they were in love. I could believe them as a couple but maybe if the romance had gotten a little more development, I would have felt stronger about them.

It was easy to fly through this book. It seemed like I’d just started it and then I was done(and wanting the next one). There were some things that were predictable but others that did surprise me. There did feel like there was a lot of set-up done in this book, which hopefully means more action in the next ones.

Lastly, the cover is absolutely gorgeous and I can’t wait until a physical copy of the book is released so I can see it in all its hardcover glory.

MY THOUGHTS
Isn't that such a beautiful cover? The first time I saw the cover I immediately wanted to read it! Thankfully, this book does not follow the cover-fraud rule, where the cover is better than the book. Yes, this book was not the best book I've ever read, but I did love it!

One thing that I really really liked about this book was the amount of world-building that went into it. There was so much involved in the making of this world and the world feels so different than our own, yet so similar and I just found that amazing.
I found the auguries interesting, yet odd. You'll know more about the auguries when you read the book, but auguries are basically special abilities that surrogates, like Violet, have where they can change the color, shape, or make something grow. Anyway, I found it fascinating that they had this, but I couldn't understand why. I'm actually really excited to see more about this in future books.
And the characters were all well-developed. They weren't flat or cardboard characters at all! And I really appreciated this!

My ONLY issue with this book was the romance.
The romance wasn't really introduced until maybe the last 30% of the book, but it did ruin things for me. The romance was similar to insta-love, but not quite. Violet meets love interest and there is definitely attraction, but the two don't actually start anything with one another until later. When they begin to admit the attraction they do get very into each other and they believe really quickly that they love each other and they will be able to stay together. I understand that in real life romance like this may happen, but in real life having these romances won't potentially get you killed (usually). This is what irritated me about the romance. I felt like they were being idiots. They knew that this could get them hurt or killed, yet they kept believing that they weren't going to get caught. (view spoiler)
I can kind of understand, though, why they stayed with each other, even knowing the consequences. Neither one of them really had freedom. Sure, love interest had a bit more than Violet, but they both didn't have much freedom and the idea that they could have this freedom to do something that they could actually do for themselves, may be worth the consequences in their eyes.

Now, the ending, I oddly liked.
Oddly, because this book ends in a cliffhanger and I usually hate cliffhangers.
But I kind of like the mysterious way that the book left off on...

IN CONCLUSION
This book has a lot going on for it! Great world-building, 3-dimensional characters, interesting ideas, but the romance really fell flat. Even though the romance stole the show in the last 20% of the book, I'm not letting it ruin my full opinion of the book. Everything else about this book was great and, oddly, the cliffhanger ending made everything better!

Original Review: http://www.literarychaos.com/

This book is one of those dystopia-esque novels that I had a really hard time getting into recently. It was not a terrible read but it also is not a book I would tell someone to run out and go buy either. I did find the idea of the story to be about an interesting subject matter; the idea of forced surrogacy and servitude was intriguing to me and made it seem like a book I could really get into, but unfortunately, it fell short of my expectations.

I have been in a bit of a slump with dystopian novels recently, and this one definitely falls into the disappointing category. I just felt like the world is one that I have seen in so many other novels. Nothing felt new or innovative, even the main characters family and home felt as if it was something I had seen before. The only part of the plot that I felt was interesting was the auguries and the concept of the surrogacy in a dystopian society, but for me, this just wasn't enough to really keep me engaged with the storyline. On top of all this, the plot was a little too slow for my liking. I felt like much of the story was just Violet reacting to things the Duchess did.

Another issue I had with this book was the characters. I was not a fan of Violet, I really wanted to be but I just could not get into her character. I just could not connect to her inner dialog. I felt like her character was on autopilot for most of the book and was just letting things happen to her. personally would rather have had a main character like Violet's friend Raven, who was spunky and actively fighting back. On top of not being able to connect to the main character, I was not a fan of her love interest Ash at all. I felt like his character came into the story a little too perfectly, and his character flat and unrealistic.

And as if not liking the characters wasn't bad enough their romance an example of Insta-love at its finest. Violet literally starts to obsess over him after their first encounter, and they seemed to fall in "love" not more than 30 pages after that! Am I the only one who finds this to be very unhealthy? The entire romance was cliche and unrealistic.

Not everything was bad about this novel, however, Ewing does an amazing job with her descriptions. For me, this was her saving grace. I often found that I could tolerate the cheesiness because I was so interested in the different description of buildings, dresses, and events. Another positive for me was just how well the author described the dehumanization that these young women went through. I felt that she did an amazing job describing the auction and the treatment of these surrogate as sub-human. She managed very effectively write about a hard topic, that many would not want to touch, even when set in a dystopian world. For this, I do have to commend her.

While this book is definitely not my favorite, it was not horrible either. I am curious enough to see where the story goes and will probably continue on with the series. I am hopeful that the next books will get better.