Of Beast and Beauty by Stacey Jay

In the beginning was the darkness, and in the darkness was a girl, and in the girl was a secret...

In the domed city of Yuan, the blind Princess Isra, a Smooth Skin, is raised to be a human sacrifice whose death will ensure her city’s vitality. In the desert outside Yuan, Gem, a mutant beast, fights to save his people, the Monstrous, from starvation. Neither dreams that together, they could return balance to both their worlds.

Isra wants to help the city’s Banished people, second-class citizens despised for possessing Monstrous traits. But after she enlists the aid of her prisoner, Gem, who has been captured while trying to steal Yuan’s enchanted roses, she begins to care for him, and to question everything she has been brought up to believe.

As secrets are revealed and Isra’s sight, which vanished during her childhood, returned, Isra will have to choose between duty to her people and the beast she has come to love.




     I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about this book, considering I wasn't a huge fan of the plot in Jay's Juliet Immortal series, but I loved the language and writing style in those books, so I was more than willing to give her another shot. I'm glad I did, because I adored this book. It maintained the fairytale quality of the original idea, but completely turned my thoughts of it upside down in such a good way. 

     I loved the ups and downs of the main character, Isra. She was obviously a girl who took everything she was taught to believe to heart, and tried to be the best person and queen she could, despite the nagging in her head that something was wrong in her homeland. Her struggle with what she was taught to believe and what she felt was morally right came together poetically in the prose and the story.

     The "beast" character of Gem was an interesting personality, and a great antithesis to Isra and her lifestyle. He was unique and I liked how he was constantly battling his desire to escape back to his tribe, his will to stay to save his people, his want to kill Isra and all the other Yuanians, and his attraction to Isra.


Things That I Liked:

1. The use of the roses and the legend that binds them all to the domed city; it was a really cool, very dark, and creepy legend of how the city is kept "alive" and it really helped add another level to the book.
2. The changing PoV narration from chapter to chapter. It really helped capture the inner conflicts of each character, and it made some of what they were doing make a lot more sense.

Things I Didn't Like:

1. The "villain" -the corporeal villain in this story was actually kind of lame. We never actually got to see him be truly villainous, and while he was scheming and clearly evil, in his head, he was doing what he thought was best for his family. But he had almost no character development, and that's lame.
2. The ending; not the happy, fairytale "everyone lives happily ever after" ending, but the one before that, with all the action and city collapsing and everyone dying. Everything happened very quickly and yet very slowly. We find out that Isra has been holed up in her tower for three freakin' months, not doing anything, but also that we have no idea if Gem is alive or not, or where the HELL he is, and then the villain has a chance to do something and then he backs down like wimp to his stupid weakling son, and then EVERYTHING GOES TO HELL OMG!! It was a lot of nothing kind of happening until Isra was out of the tower, and then the fairytale ending comes into play which was great.

Overall Impression:

     I liked this story. It was something interesting and different from an author I wasn't previously enthusiastic about. If you're in the mood for fairy tales, check this one out.

Blonde's Rating: 4/5

Goodreads Rating: 4/5

Amazon Buyer's Rating: 4.5/5

Thanks for reading!

The Blonde

Everneath by Brodi Ashton

      Last spring, Nikki Beckett vanished, sucked into an underworld known as the Everneath. Now she’s returned—to her old life, her family, her boyfriend—before she’s banished back to the underworld . . . this time forever. She has six months before the Everneath comes to claim her, six months for good-byes she can’t find the words for, six months to find redemption, if it exists.

      Nikki longs to spend these precious months forgetting the Everneath and trying to reconnect with her boyfriend, Jack, the person most devastated by her disappearance—and the one person she loves more than anything. But there’s just one problem: Cole, the smoldering immortal who enticed her to the Everneath in the first place, has followed Nikki home. Cole wants to take over the throne in the underworld and is convinced Nikki is the key to making it happen. And he’ll do whatever it takes to bring her back, this time as his queen.

     As Nikki’s time on the Surface draws to a close and her relationships begin slipping from her grasp, she is forced to make the hardest decision of her life: find a way to cheat fate and remain on the Surface with Jack or return to the Everneath and become Cole’s queen.

     I picked up this book, expecting it to be a one-hit wonder similar to Meg Cabot's Abandon series, where a girl has infatuated the keeper to the Land of the Dead, but I was pleasantly surprised! This was a really unique story with an original plot and a shocking ending, leaving me very excited for the sequel.

     Things That I Liked:

     1. The cover -it is gorgeous, and I can't get over just how pretty it is.

     2. The main character, Nikki, is strong, courageous, and self-sacrificing, prepared to spend the last of her short time back at home helping her family and bringing relief to others rather than satisfying herself. 

     3. The mystery: yes there is the mystery of Cole and the other Everlings and how they live, but I think the readers were only given a small taste of the bigger mystery in this story, which is that of the Everneath's queen and the ruling class, and their existence. 

     4. The timeline: the majority of the story was in a conventional timeline, but whenever the story reached a point where Nikki remembered something significant from her past, the text would go back to that moment, with each chapter/break subtitled with the time and location, to minimize confusion to the readers.

     Things That I Didn't Like:

     1. I was unclear about the location of "Park City" where the story takes place. Normally this wouldn't make much of a difference for me, but there were a few mentions about being a town known for American Indian tourism/memorabilia which made me wonder about where this was taking place, as well as the local river rapids and mountains that seemed easy to drive to. But overall, not a big deal, in fact, a very small one.

     2. Cole's motivation: I didn't like that he wouldn't explain anything about how he and Nikki would "make a run for the Everneath throne." Obviously the queen is very powerful and knows a lot of information about her Everlings, so how would these two be able to not only keep Nikki's existence a secret, but then fight her for her ruling status? 

     Overall Impression:

     This was a really interesting story, and I really liked the voice in which it was written. The prose was well-written, and there were few holes left by the end of the book. The ending was shocking, and left for a satisfying cliffhanger to have you scrambling for the sequel.

Blonde Rating: 4/5

Amazon Rating: 4.2/5

Goodreads Rating: 3.8/5

Stay tuned for my review of Everbound, the sequel to Everneath; there will NOT be a review for Neverfall, the digital novella companion to Everneath.

Thanks for reading,

The Blonde