Carnelian (The Chalcedony Chronicles, #1)

by B Kristin McMichael

• ISBN10: 0989121879
• ISBN13: 9780989121873
• Publish Date: 12 January 2014
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Lexia Press
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 238
• Language: English

Reviews

[Baroness Book Trove]

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy from the Author. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.Carnelian by B. Kristin McMichael is an excellent book about starting life at college with the touch of romance and time travel.

Will Seth and Mari be able to figure out a way to be together?

Marcella Navina

Marcella Navina is our main character and only point of view character. Mari, as she would instead be called, is going to college for her first year and is rather excited about it. She catches the eye, well more of the head, of the one and only Seth Sangre. He plays football and is the star quarterback. There is a lot that happens in this book, and one of them is the fact that Mari, as a character, grows. She does that by letting Seth get close to her, and Mari does that from how well she plays at CRUSH. A dorm building competition that brings normalcy to the story as a regular thing at that happens at some colleges the first semester. 

I think in a different life we could be friends. We both love reading paranormal young adult books, and we are both morning people. Another thing that I like about Mari is that she knows what she doesn't want to happen again while her heart thinks otherwise. There isn't much that I don't like about her.

Seth Sangre

Even though the little bit of Seth that we see before we are in Mari's perspective is the short prologue at the beginning, Seth, after that point, is a sophomore in college and is helplessly trying to figure out who he is looking for to help him. At first, he seems like a player, but he isn't. Seth has also seen that he needs to go slow with Mari, which is something that I love about him doing. Seth and Mari are cute together, and I liked seeing their relationship blossom out of the friendship that they started. I just hope that good things can happen with these two.

What I like about Seth is that he wants to prove himself to Mari and make her see that he is right for her. Another that I like about Seth is how protective he is despite the time gap because there are so many reasons why but some of them contain spoilers, but he just doesn't want anything wrong to happen to her. There isn't much that I dislike about him either.

The Time Travel

The time travel part of the book is a big spoiler part, but you would never guess Mari's connection. I thought that I assumed right, but I was blown away by how wrong I was. Now I have more questions as to what will happen in the next book.

Five Stars

Carnelian by B. Kristin McMichael is the first book I have read by this fantastic author, and her writing style already hooks me. I think with this book, just having a first-person point of view and having that be Mari was a fantastic choice. The reason for that is because she is new to this and is maybe more connected to it then what both her and Seth think. I am now going to have to wait until September at the latest to pick this series back up. I am giving this book five stars and recommending it to anyone that wants to read it.

Other Books in the Series

 



Thank you for dropping by! I hope you enjoyed this review of Carnelian by B. Kristin McMichael.

Until the next time,



Happy Reading!

This review was originally posted on Baroness' Book Trove

[Katie King]

Tarte: Books, food, DIY and more!

**I received my copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.**

**DID NOT FINISH - 30%**

One of the major draws to this book was the cover. It is SO pretty, but it's masking a huge mess.

The MC is a judgmental bitch

I had grown up with girls like the one in front of me. Everything about her was fake, from her eyelashes to her boobs. Private school at St. Maria's had prepared me for two things at the same time: fake girls and dealing with the people you never really want to be associated with. This girl was exactly that.

A paragraph later...

"I hate freshman. They always think they're better than the rest of us. Did you see how she talked down to us?" I had no choice but to talk down as they were seated. She wasn't the brightest, I guess.

This girl Mari is seriously such a stuck-up bitch that it almost seems like a joke. Maybe they think you talked down to them because YOU DID RIGHT AFTER YOU COMPLETELY JUDGED HER ON HER LOOKS. She comes to college and observes all theses so-called stuck-up, stupid "whores" when in REALITY, Mari is exactly that (maybe minus the whores part). In psychology, we call this projection. It's a form of defense mechanism where someone cannot deal with their shortcomings, so they project them onto others. In this example, Mari is a judgmental bitch, but she can't deal with that so thinks basically all other females are judgmental bitches except her.

I pulled out my book to ignore all the girls who were made out to the max with heavy makeup, perfect tans, and shorts that showed off more than just their legs. I couldn't tell if the goal was to show more boob or more butt in what the girls were wearing. In the middle of the twenty or more girls was the brunette from my first day of checking into the dorms (note: a.k.a. the girl mentioned above). She looked even more made up than when I saw her. The poor guy she was after was in the sports complex.

This is just about some poor girls sitting outside the sports building! No wonder nobody likes you!

The writing is pretty bad

The dark auburn color was different. It was almost a chocolate brown, but the red gleaming in it made it otherwise. He was a guy, but the color was just actually pretty. The red was more subtle than my own bright-red hair. I would have given anything to grow up with hair as dark red as his.

Let me just point out first that apparently guys aren't allowed to have "pretty" hair but this guy defies that rule. Then think about all the different ways you were just told that this guy has dark red hair. Or is is a chocolate brown?

I looked between them. I was outnumbered. I didn't mind my morning classes. Maybe I was the only crazy person in the room. Ty and Sim both looked at me for agreement. I looked between them and shrugged. What could I say? I kind of was a morning person.

This is in response to two characters discussing how much they hate morning classes. All Mari has to say is that she enjoys her morning classes because she's a morning person. But instead we get tons of rant-y style description. This is a problem is rampant in this book. Another example:

Prof. Edwards was the reason I was at Morton College (note: I thought it was Morton Carole? idk). He'd been my tutor the summer before my senior year in biology. I did an independent study of biology over the summer to not have to use time during the year taking the class. Prof. Edwards was a friend of my grandfather, and had been in the Chicago area over the summer. Grandfather lined him up as my mentor for the independent study, and thus began my summer of biology with him.

Seriously?? Cut the bullshit, I get it - you studied biology over the summer!

Every character is a shallow stereotype

We have the nice Indian roommate with a sari-clad mother and turban-wearing father. They have Indian accents and control the roommate's life and want her to be a doctor. The roommate however is completely boy-obsessed and focuses on nothing else. Oh that clash between teenagers and their traditional parents...

There's also bitchy blonde "Barbies" that do cheerleading and "throw themselves at every guy" (seriously, stop saying this on every page). They are brainless, cloned sluts that exist solely to sleep with as many guys as possible and start bitchy catfights over guys. With this attitude I'm not surprised Mari doesn't have any friends.

I couldn't care less about the romance

The romance had barely developed (or maybe that's as far as it was going to be?) but I could tell it was going to be one of those amazing if-he-stalks-me-he-loves-me type of things and I really just checked out at that point. Not interested at all.

What is this about??

Where I stopped, 30%, I had yet to see anything that had to do with fantasy, science fiction, time travel, or really anything except a contemporary plot. There was a little bit of "where did the boys come from" but just because you can't trace someone's whole elementary school life on Google, doesn't mean that they appeared out of thin air. I can tell that the author had some good ideas, but really struggled to connect everything together. If this book was a chain, it would have some seriously flawed links.

[Kim Deister]

Carnelian is the first in the new Chalcedony Chronicles, a new adult series that promises a bit of a sci-fi flavor in the form of time travel. I have mixed opinions about this book, mostly about the level of emphasis paid to different aspects of the plot.

Mari is a college freshman, hours away from home and seeking some level of independence from her rather ordered life and overprotective family. It is interesting that she almost comes off as socially awkward when she first arrives at school, a little over dramatic when it comes to friends and relationships. The reality is that she is an attractive girl that isn't socially awkward, but gun shy when it comes to guys, although she frequently came across as a bit arrogant in her early interactions with Seth. The characters, all of them, are interesting and varied, all characters that were easy to relate to or to understand.

On her first day, she meets three brothers and it quickly becomes clear that they have secrets. Seemingly against her will, she falls for one of the three guys and the love fest snowballs quickly. For someone who argued against relationships as much as Mari did, she fell into it pretty easily, but I can live with that.

Most of the book felt like a contemporary, new adult romance, with little to do with the sci-fi/time travel aspect. This is where the questions of emphasis come in. There was a lot of attention paid to a collegiate competition that really had little to do with the story and didn't really move it forward in any way. On the flip side, the main thrust behind the brothers and the time travel was seemingly a big part of the main story line, yet it almost seemed as if it were brushed aside for less integral points. There were things that the main characters were supposed to be doing in order to save humanity, but there was far more attention paid to the romantic aspect. The mythology behind the time travel had massive potential, mythology blended with ancient history in an interesting way.

Despite these issues, there was so much potential that I wanted to know more and kept turning the pages. Regardless of my own personal issues, there was more than enough to the story to keep me interested..

Things to love...

--The blend of created mythology and ancient history.
--The light moments and the dark moments.

Things I wanted more/less of...

--More emphasis on the sci-fi aspect.
--More development of the main thrust of the story.

My Recommendation: Yes, I had issues, but I still recommend this book. The writing style is good and the story has great bones. I have already purchased (and read) the next book in the series! I gave it 3.8 mugs.