Saturday, August 16, 2014

ARC Review: The Beautiful Ashes - Jeaniene Frost

The Beautiful Ashes
Jeaniene Frost 
Series: Broken Destiny, #1
Genre: New Adult, Paranormal, Romance
Release Date: August 26, 2014
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Word Rating: Disappointing
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When I picked up and ARC of The Beautiful Ashes at BEA this year, I was really excited to read it. Visions of strange realms? Parallel realms? A war that could doom the world?! I'm in! Unfortunately, it wasn't as promising as I had hoped.

This might sound odd, but despite the fact that I was really excited about The Beautiful Ashes, I kind of went into it blind. I read the description before BEA, but between then and when I read it, I didn't read it again and I forgot what it was. This is what I do for a lot of what I read, but for The Beautiful Ashes, it made the beginning of the book a complete struggle to get into. I started reading the first two chapters and my brain was just like, "What is going on?? What????? THIS DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE." I was so confused that I had to flip over to the back of the book so I could have some semblance of an idea about what was happening. If I was a patient person I could have just read a few more short chapters to understand what was happening, but I just couldn't handle how cryptic it was and I needed to know what was going on.

Despite my initially reaction when reading The Beautiful Ashes, it definitely got better and I enjoyed reading it. The concept is really cool, being a twist on angels and demons and other things. I've never read a book that had a mythology like this and I thought Jeaniene Frost did a good job developing the idea.

The place where The Beautiful Ashes really fell through for me was the characters. The characters just didn't leap out of the page at me - the main character, Ivy, definitely had thoughts and emotions but the writing didn't make me feel those emotions with her. As for our other main character, Adrian, I just didn't think he was the most compelling love interest. Sure, I shipped it, but I wasn't as invested in the outcome as I've been in other books.

Overall, I liked The Beautiful Ashes but not as much as I had hoped. I've never read any of Jeaniene Frost's other books and I don't think this is a reflection of her best work. While the characters weren't the best, the concept was really cool and I enjoyed learning more about the world. I'm looking forward to seeing what else Jeaniene Frost has in store for the second book in the Broken Destiny series!

- Kiersten

Have you read any angel and demon mythologies recently?
Let us know in the comments!

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