Review ~ Scarlet Stone by Jewel E Ann

Book Description:

“My name is Scarlet Stone, and my biggest fear is that someday I will find what I want most in life, and it will be impossible to steal.” 

What happens when life just stops? When one moment makes you question your entire existence? 

Scarlet Stone is a third-generation thief who has everything: a doting fiancé, a spacious London flat, and a legitimate job offer. In a single breath, everything becomes nothing, and she finds herself on a plane to Savannah, Georgia in search of the meaning of life. 

After securing a six-month lease for a beachfront house on Tybee Island, Scarlet changes the way she looks, thinks, eats—basically her entire outlook on life. She needs peace, but what she gets is a housemate who looks like Thor, acts like a warden, and smells her proximity like a Bloodhound. 

Theodore Reed is a carpenter and perfectionist with a body built of steel, a black, hollow heart, and a hunger for revenge. He doesn’t like company, girly-smelling crap, and British accents. 

He resents every breath she takes. 

She’s fascinated by his every move. 

In time, they discover their coexistence is toxic, their physical attraction is electric, the secrets they keep mean the difference between life and death, and the only truth they share is that everything is a lie. 

“Over eighty-five percent of the world's population believes in a higher power, yet, very few people believe in miracles.”

Do you believe?

Buy Links:

Amazon UK:  http://amzn.to/2hn2OVi

Amazon US: http://amzn.to/2hDTa3y

Our Review:

Reviewed by Donna ~ 3 stars

“The only thing worse than living with regret, is dying with regret.”

This is a really hard review for me to write because I have loved everything I have read from Jewel E Ann so I had high expectations for this one. Maybe that is the biggest problem, Jewel E Ann had set the bar so high. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate this book, I liked it, I just didn’t love it, I just had too many issues.

For me this book lacked character connection and that is something that I need to really love a book. I want to feel everything, I want to be hit in the heart with the emotions, driven into a frenzy by the angst and totally blindsided by the twists and turns. The twists and turns were great, I never saw them coming but the previous two were lacking for me.

Scarlet Stone was hard to connect with. Maybe it was her aloofness and her secrets that kept her from conveying herself through the pages but she always seemed disconnected and disassociated from the story itself even though this was her book.

“You are a labyrinth—an onion with infinite layers. If given the chance, I think I could really miss you someday.”

Scarlet and Theo were both broken characters and I love that, I love those characters that are desperately struggling and need that helping emotional hand to get themselves back on the straight and narrow. There is something about vulnerable characters that always tugs at my heart strings and that is why I was surprised with my apathy towards Scarlet. Theo was intriguing though and his story was the one that really kept my attention throughout. Literally knowing nothing about him had me thinking of endless possibilities, none of which were correct of course, but I loved the way that his story tied into the book overall.

“My head is undiscriminating with the memories it keeps, but my heart has already forgotten.”

This book though is more about a journey, a journey for all characters in some form or another. The ramifications of lies and mistruths, the debilitating effects of guilt and revenge. There are many messages cleverly interwoven throughout this book and they were easily received and this part is what I took the most away from.

“I think revenge is a very animalistic part of human behavior that is ingrained in all of us from birth. Even on a very basic level of a mother’s instinct to protect her child, humans have that capability. And like certain animals, we can tame it, control it, but it never completely goes away.”

As in usual Jewel E Ann style there is wit smattered throughout an otherwise, intriguing, suspenseful read. The writing style as ever was absorbing and engaging and beautiful in its delivery, I just needed that character connection that I craved. I will say being a Brit, Scarlets dialogue was rather irritating at times. Yes, it was British, but at times it was over the top British, and considering the kind of person she was it just didn’t fit her as a character, it actually had the opposite effect and made me laugh at times when I should have been emotionally invested. The conclusion to the reason why Scarlet moved from the UK to the US was unbelievable and after the way this plot line was integrated into the story from the very beginning and it being a major part, to have this conclusion to me, was a let-down and seemed an easy way out.

“It’s mad love. The kind that makes no sense. The kind that is bigger than anything I’ve ever experienced. The kind that ensnares your soul and never lets go.”

However, I still liked it, I liked how all the characters’ lives were interwoven and how each had a domino effect on the other. The story was cleverly put together and intelligently written. If it wasn’t for my few issues, this definitely had five-star potential.