Genre: YA Fantasy
Published: October 1, 2012
Series: #1 (Souls of the Stones)
Length: 344 pages
Source: author (review copy)
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“In a world comprised of three rival kingdoms as different from each other as the families that rule them, Emariya Warren is unique in being a daughter of not one but two of the ruling families.
Sixteen years ago, Emariya narrowly escaped dying on their cold estate floor beside her mother. Now, after learning her father has been captured, Emariya makes the desperate decision to follow in her mother’s ill-fated footsteps and journey to marry the prince of a rival land, Torian Ahlen. But when Emariya discovers the secrets of the three families and an ominous prophecy warning the three bloodlines must never be combined, she begins to fear the handsome prince waiting for her may desire more than to steal her heart.”
This book is full of awesomeness! A must read! Yes, it’s a fantasy with princess, princes, kings, queens and kingdoms, but the ideas within that were very well thought of. I have to admit, the first 60 pages was kind of confusing for me, maybe just because the author was still introducing us to the novel. As the story progresses it was just getting better and better and more exciting! It’s filled with action and it left me predicting. I really like the idea of having 3 kingdoms and there is a different gift for each kingdom, but only if you’re in the line (which were the princess, kings, etc.). Look at that cover, isn’t it gorgeous!? The summary basically says it. I hate it when a book’s summary is nothing like the story, but in Cornerstone, that’s what you’re going to expect. To be more straightforward, Emariya, the princess of Eltar is on a journey to Thalmas (another kingdom) with her escorts where she is to be married to my future husband (IN MY DREAMS) prince Torian. During their journey, a bunch of twisted events happened that left me at the edge of my seat!
Although it’s 3rd person point of view, I could relate to the characters which I think the author did a marvelous job! I rarely, rarely, rarely, have crushes on the hero and Torian Ahlen is definitely one of them :”> Hehee… I wish I was Emariya right now. There is sorta’ a love triangle in the book with of course Emariya (the princess), Torian (my prince!), and Emariya’s super kind and caring best friend Garith. I also love Garith because he is such an understanding and trust worthy guy. The characters are such likable and I feel like I was watching a movie! So the bad guy here is… I’m not telling you, but I’m pretty sure you won’t like him. You would suspect that he’s the bad guy, but you’ll see his worst at the end of the novel. What he did was definitely a shocking revelation!
For the writing style, it was good! It switched from different perspectives, but not most of the time. It usually switched off when the characters were in different places which was just a couple of times. The pacing wasn’t too slow or too fast which I liked. There were several typos though and I encountered some sentences that had a missing word in between words. I mean, there were sentences that if you read them, you feel like there should be a certain word to make the whole sentence much clearer and not choppy. There were also punctuation mistakes, and the commas were overused. For the plot, I would definitely give it a 5/5. If you’re up for adventure, love triangle, and excitement, then go and buy Cornerstone right now! I’m totally gonna look out for the rest of the series. The ending, oh my goodness, was a cliff hanger but that’s okay because that means there’s a whole lot more revelation to come in the next books! Overall I recommend this to each and every human being. (;
“Daughter of stone, child of two. Choose your path and the way will open to you.” – from Cornerstone
Make sure to visit Kelly’s website because she’s having a virtual book tour! The links of the blogs participating is posted on there. There’s also a picture of a map with the 3 kingdoms and it really helped me visualize of what path our protagonists were taking. I hope you guys enjoy reading this book if you are going to because I sure did!
