The House of the Stone by Amy Ewing

TL;DR Raven is a better heroine, tbh, but this is all we get of her

TBR #1794, added Sept 17, 2016

library ebook (no hold) 9/22/16

read 9/23/16

I decided to check out the novella for The Jewel because I hoped that Raven's story would be more dynamic and more ~gritty~ than Violet's.

Yeah, I should've known better.

I mean, if you liked The Jewel, then I think it's pretty standard. It definitely is a little darker, but not in the way I wanted. It was just a little crueler without any true reasoning behind it than the Countess being masochistic.

The unfortunate thing was that it was so short. There wasn't any actual story to it -- it's just the first few days from Raven's point of view. It passes faster than Violet's narration does (which is unfortunate, because I enjoyed Raven's voice) and abruptly ends without any resolution.

So, like the novella, I have very little to say (lol).

The sad thing is, I think I would've enjoyed The Jewel a lot more if it had been about Raven instead of Violet. She was a lot braver and her situation was so much more dystopian. Raven's experience was what I was expecting from the story, not Violet's pampering. Raven has so much more to fight for and even in the 89 pages (supposedly) that I got to read about her, I cared for her more than I did Violet.

And unfortunately, because the main series is about Violet, I think it's pretty unlikely that I'll continue it. I even considered it if The Black Key looked promising ... but it really doesn't. Maybe it's just me being a heartless only child LOL. I don't care enough about Violet, and I certainly don't care about her siblings from the chapter or so that we got to see them in person.

I'll probably still recommend The Jewel to people who are just getting into YA or as a "read The Selection? Need more? Read this!" kind of thing. It's not absolutely terrible, but I found it a letdown.

TL;DR Raven's story would've made The Lone City series more interesting to me, but alas, we only got a novella I breezed through in an hour even though I was dead-tired. I'm calling it a loss and moving on.

CWs: torture, injuries, loss of autonomy / forced submission (... I really don't know how to describe this. This review -- the one that made me decide to read The House of the Stone, ironically* -- described it as "bordering to BDSM". Except it's missing the whole consent is key concept.) (*The review got my attention because it didn't really match all the others on Goodreads, and based on The Jewel, I was wondering how they were defining BDSM. Torture and BDSM are two different concepts.)