Amber's Review of Ivory and Bone (Ivory and Bone, #1)

by Julie Eshbaugh

“Exquisitely written, ferocious, and haunting. Don’t miss this one!” —Sarah J. Maas, New York Times bestselling author of the Throne of Glass series

“Julie Eshbaugh is a unique new voice with talent enough for a whole team of writers. I’m still under the spell of her storytelling.”—Amie Kaufman, New York Times bestselling co-author of Illuminae and These Broken Stars

Loosely inspired by Pride and Prejudice, Ivory and Bone is an enthralling tale of high-stakes survival, blinding betrayal, and star-crossed love.

Hunting, gathering, and keeping his family safe—that’s the life seventeen-year-old Kol knows. Then bold, enigmatic Mya arrives from the south with her family, and Kol is captivated. He wants her to trust him, but any hopes of impressing her are ruined when he makes a careless—and nearly grave—mistake. What Kol doesn’t know is that underneath Mya’s cool disdain is a history wrought with loss that comes to light when another clan arrives. With them is Lo, an enemy from Mya’s past who Mya swears has ulterior motives.

As Kol grows closer to Lo, tensions between Mya and Lo escalate until violence erupts. Faced with shattering losses, Kol is forced to question every person he’s trusted. One thing is for sure: this was a war that Mya or Lo—Kol doesn’t know which—had been planning all along.

With riveting action and illustrative prose that leaps from the page, Julie Eshbaugh will have readers mesmerized and thirsty for more…So don’t miss the sequel, Obsidian and Stars.

This review was originally posted on Books of Amber

Thoughts before reading this book: Prehistoric world? Fantasy? Sign me up!

Thoughts after reading this book: Oh. Well. That was disappointing.

Is just one book that ticks all of my prehistoric/dinosaur nerd boxes too much to ask for? Apparently so. I was so, so excited about Ivory and Bone before I read it because I'm all for prehistoric settings. Unfortunately I didn't connect with the way the book is written, and I didn't care for any of the characters. Bit of a downer.

The main problem I had was the second person point of view that this is written in. The main character, Kol, is addressing Mya, and it completely threw me out of the story. I think second person can be done well on occasion. You know, if there's a need for it. But there really wasn't with this book.

In addition to that, this book was mostly about the romance between Kol and Mya, and less about the action and murder and fantastic setting. The latter could have been used for all sorts of epic things, but I feel like the author didn't make full use of it.

I don't want to read the sequel because I'm afraid it'll be much of the same. I can't even remember whether or not the book ended in a way that warranted a sequel, so that's not good either. I guess I'll recap Ivory and Bone for Recaptains, but then I'll cut my ties with the series.

Ivory and Bone (Ivory and Bone, #1)

by Julie Eshbaugh

Reviewed by Amber on Apr 23, 2016

Reading updates