Review of The Jewel by Amy Ewing: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Jewel

by Amy Ewing

Expected publication date: September 2nd 2014

Received from: ARC from Liberty Bay Books 

---

The Jewel means wealth. The Jewel means beauty. The Jewel means royalty. But for girls like Violet, the Jewel means servitude. Not just any kind of servitude. Violet, born and raised in the Marsh, has been trained as a surrogate for the royalty—because in the Jewel the only thing more important than opulence is offspring.

Purchased at the surrogacy auction by the Duchess of the Lake and greeted with a slap to the face, Violet (now known only as #197) quickly learns of the brutal truths that lie beneath the Jewel’s glittering facade: the cruelty, backstabbing, and hidden violence that have become the royal way of life.

Violet must accept the ugly realities of her existence... and try to stay alive. But then a forbidden romance erupts between Violet and a handsome gentleman hired as a companion to the Duchess’s petulant niece. Though his presence makes life in the Jewel a bit brighter, the consequences of their illicit relationship will cost them both more than they bargained for.

---

I am trying to control myself here enough to write a decent, clear cut, and honest review, but there are a lot of feels here and so this might get ugly...sorry. 

The Good:

-The concept. It is a really cool idea! It's creative, imaginative and provides all kinds of literary opportunities for the writer that could stun the readers if used right. The idea of it all is intriguing to almost anyone. 

-I wanted to read more (through most of it.) I really needed to know what happened! 

-The world building was quite nice. Very vivid. Amy Ewing was smart to include just the right amount of history/background so that I could understand the world, without getting bored or overwhelmed.

The Bad and The Ugly:

-The writing. The writing wasn't really bad or ugly, but I certainly didn't love it, so I put it down here.  It was a bit bland and unimpressive. It also used a lot of cliches, redundant descriptions, and repetitiveness. It also lacked the depth that I thought would have been accomplished with such a concept.  

- The way you learned about characters. This kind of goes with what I said above but I really want to elaborate. When a character's physical appearance was described it was all told to you in great detail and often you were told the same description again later on (of the same character) in the book in almost the exact same words. For the most part everything about characters was told to you flat out. 

-The world building. I know, I know I just said I liked it, and I did! I liked about 98%-99% of it. I had one big issue. I couldn't figure out a time period or get a grasp on how advanced they were. At first the whole thing seemed almost medieval, but then they had some technology and science that was far more advanced, but then I'd read more and everything else didn't seem advanced. I couldn't figure it out! It was a bit distracting. I get that it's a whole new world so obviously the time periods and advancements wouldn't match up with the ones we know from our world, but I still wanted some kind of an idea as to how advanced they were as a society. I think that only stuck out to me or bothered me because it was so inconsistent. Somethings were modern others became obsolete decades-100s of years ago. 

-Violet and the characters in general. The characters weren't very well written. I was unimpressed with all of them. They were like cardboard cut outs of real people/characters. They were under developed and I kept waiting for them to grow or open up, or to have the opportunity to get to know them better somehow, but it never came. They felt flat and limp so the story was less interesting and I was less attached to them all than I could have been. Violet, I had the same issue with her as I talked about above.  I couldn't pick words to describe her really. I didn't get a sense of personality from her. I knew she loved her family, especially her sister, and her friends and playing cello, but I didn't know anything about what type of person she was or what her personality was like. I'd say she was strong and courageous, because I think she was supposed to be, but she was horribly weak and a coward a lot of the time too. She was stuck somewhere in between the two like most average people. Above all, my biggest issue with her was that she was a bloody idiot sometimes. It wasn't that she messed up or wasn't flawless or anything. Generally she wasn't stupid, but in this one part...well I actually facepalmed in real life while reading it. That's all I can say without spoilers. Read here to find out the spoilers... So she is in "love" with a gigolo ( The word used in the book is companion but it works exactly the same.), and she sees him kissing the girl he was hired to be a companion for and is supposed to kiss to save his sister (all of which she knows. It is very apparent she knows or should know. She has been flat out told several times in a very clear way that should get through even the thickest of skulls.) and then she runs off crying and we have to read a whole scene of him explaining himself, her crying, and then them making up. 

- Speaking of characters, the character development was nonexistent. This was frustrating for me because there was so much opportunity to make violet grow, but since she was so underdeveloped to start with the growth didn't happen. Then towards the end I actually read a paragraph of Violet talking about how strong and wise she's grown, how she's grown up, and changed....

What?! When did that happen? Am I missing some pages or something? I went back through the book and thought through it some but I still don't see how or where she grew because she seemed to lack a personality for the entire book! 

-Everything romance related. I was loving the book, devouring it, that is until the romance hit. I actually had to put it down for a day because I was so furious and disgusted. 

It was every book worms worst night mare. There was a horribly done, cheesy, cliche, predictable forbidden love.  As I talked about yesterday forbidden love can be done right, this was absolutely not one of those times. Not only do we have to deal with this horrible, melodramatic situation, but it is also insta-love! I have never ever read an insta-love that was so instant and shallow, and quick. It was unrealistic and it undermines the characters's feelings making them come across as fake. I wanted to puke and punch someone at the same time for the entire middle section of the book when all of this was so prominent. I still can't get over how awful it was to read. I don't have words for it. 

-The Romeo and Juliet "allusion." The thing was, Ewing didn't just offhandedly mention or reference Romeo and Juliet, she tore a page right out of the book. Spoiler: Violet is given the opportunity to escape by taking something that puts her in a death like sleep and she'll be retrieved from the morgue after they pronounce her dead and taken off to freedom. Also, her "love" almost doesn't find out what she was going to do. I guess it bothered me that it followed Romeo and Juliet so closely.

-The plot and ending.  The plot was pretty good for a while, then about half way through it slowed to a screeching halt. The end was supposed to be shocking, but I already had a pretty good guess as to what was going to happen so it wasn't that surprising. During the last quarter of the book, all kinds of problems were introduced, and by the end not one issue was resolved. So there was this overwhelming amount of conflict just thrown in at the end AND nothing was solved ever from any part of the book. It was a bad combination.

Overall/general thoughts and opinions:

As I said at the start, it was quite entertaining for the first half, but once that romance hit it went downhill fast. I can't really say that I'd recommend it anyways, but :m not going to stop you from reading it. A lot of other people enjoyed it so you might, but personally, I just can't promote it and outright encourage others to read it. I give it one or one and a half stars. 

Goodreads and/or buy it here.

General Consensus:

Let's Rant About: Common Events in Teen Relationships in YA Novels

Whoo! So here's the rant I promised/warned you about. I feel bad doing this, but I need to get this out, and am excited to see what you guys think of the subject, and the discussion that will hopefully follow this.

**WARNING: THIS MAY CONTAIN MINOR SPOILERS**

It all started when I was thinking about what I'd put in a review on These Broken Stars. I remembered that I didn't really like the characters in it or Lilac and Tarver's relationship, but I couldn't figure out why exactly. Then I realized I had a pretty big issue with Lilac. She was just a straight up entitled "beach," (Yes, the sandy kind. I try to use nice words.) to Tarver at least. We are all told why, and it is understandable.*SPOILER* Her father basically murdered the last guy she had a thing with, obviously she wouldn't want that to happen again, but I had a serious issue with how she handled it. I mean really, the only way she could avoid this was to be cruel and mean when he was keeping her alive?

Then I realized that this tends to be a fairly common theme in YA novels. This whole idea of, "I love you, but to protect you I'm just going to push you away in rude unexplained ways, but in the end it's all going to be ok, and we'll live happily ever after..." is repeated in many YA books and it bothers me. When has this ever worked out in real life? Why are authors putting something like this in print over and over if we can clearly see that it isn't good and that it wouldn't work out so perfectly in real life? We are telling readers' subconscious' that this "solution" to dealing with situations like these in relationships in real life actually works out too. The world already lacks communication and kindness and relationships are already complicated enough with out trying to push every one away by being mean without explanation  because we've seen it work out in books. We know the subliminal messages conveyed in media and advertising is proven to affect the decisions we make and how we live our lives and reading something in a book doesn't necessarily work any different.

 There were so many other things Lilac could have done rather than be mean and hope that is irritating enough to make him leave her alone. Option one: tell him the truth a bit sooner than she did. Option two: politely turn him down (and maybe apologize for leading him on in the beginning if she was worried about that.) Option three: politely explain why distance is necessary with logical reasons. Option four: treat him politely, and with respect, but discourage any relationship from the start. She could have done other things too. Now I get that if she had done something different it would have taken away some of the conflict in the book making it less interesting, but I still feel like the authors should have either found away to make the book be interesting despite her polite rejection (or how ever else she decided to peacefully resolve the situation) or just not had the issue of her pushing him away in there and either just eliminated that element or replaced it with another issue.

What do you guys think? Do you read lots of books were this occurs? How do you feel about this theme in YA books? Is it getting old or do you find it to be entertaining and think it helps the story?

The Pulse Rant

*WARNING THIS POST MAY CONTAIN SOME MILD SPOILERS!*

Well here it is the post you've all been waiting for. Or maybe dreading rants can be annoying I know, but it didn't feel right to call it a review because I am unsure how I feel about the book exactly and don't feel comfortable putting a star amount on it or anything like that so, I am afraid this will be a bit more of a rant. Well, let's get this party started, let all them feels out. I suppose I will kick it off by simply saying I hated  this book. I would never recommend it and if I were to rate it just on how I felt after reading it I would only give it one star. It sounds so simple! I obvious have an opinion. However, I don't have much of a reason. I can't figure out why exactly I disliked it so much! The plot was decent and the story line was original and a very interesting idea. The writing was ok and the characters weren't bad. What's not to like then? I don't know exactly, although I have several things that I can tell you I hated. I guess I'll tackle the big one first. The entire story was one big messy tangle of people in love with each other. It was worse than a triangle. The main character, Faith,  has like three guys after her. One of which is way too young for her (thankfully he backs off eventually and doesn't try too hard for the most part), the other is a jerk who decides he is in love with her after one date, and the third watches her sleep from outside her window! How creepy is that! AND! On top of all that The sister of the jerk is in love with the stalker.
SPOILER: And so she tries to kill Faith just because of this.
MORE SPOILERS: Also, someone (not naming names here) gets hit in the head by a track and field hammer and some how survives but is in like a coma or something in the middle of no where without actual doctors and such and survives transport across a vast distance. Only to be awakened by a kiss freaking sleeping beauty style. And this was the first kiss between the two of them while one of them was unconscious. AND, they don't really have a relationship before this. There are hints that they kind of like each other and they kind of sort of go on a date but nothing really happens until they go all sleeping beauty.
Also, for some incomprehensible reason Patrick felt the need to flat out explain the meaning and symbolism of one of the only symbols in the book that was already very clear! It completely ruined it!
I don't know exactly why but I hated this book. I can't stick a rating on it and I feel rather guilty for not liking it or at least having a strong set of reasons to hate it. I am sorry for the spoilers! I tried to keep them as non-spoiler-y as possible but I had to put them in there because they really bothered me!