JUST FINISHED: The Jewel by Amy Ewing.
[Finished at ~1:20am, & 362 pages long.]
A surprisingly quick read. This also slightly restored my faith in impulse buys – they’re not always a bad idea! I only bought this book because it kept taunting me from the special offers table at Waterstones. 😉 Anyway, post-buying it, I found some good reviews, so I wasn’t exactly expecting to dislike it, but I also didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did.
Reasonably fast-paced, with likeable main characters, wonderfully awful (but still occasionally sympathetic) villains, and an engaging (& suspenseful) plot. The only real complaint I’d heard about it before was that it was kind of insta-love-y, & I definitely get where that was coming from, but it felt pretty natural to me: girl grows up secluded from the opposite sex, then meets a guy who’s both kind to her and incredibly attractive, and becomes infatuated. It felt to me as though Violet & Ash’s relationship took a little while to get to the love-stage.
Downside: An annoying cliffhanger at the end, especially since the sequel doesn’t have a projected release date (or even a title) yet. 
CURRENT READATHON STATUS: Drinking a refreshing energy drink… in juice form!
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