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Elevetha

A Sea of Stars

 Teenaged. Clinomaniac. Caffeine Addicted. Fangirl. Bibliomaniac. Introverted. 

 

Challenge Participant
Summers at Castle Auburn - Sharon Shinn 2.5 stars.

It was decent enough but nothing stellar.

Pacing could have used some work.
Could have used some editing; especially towards the middle.
I would have appreciated more developed characters.
Writing itself was fine.

Corie visits her step-sister at Castle Auburn every summer. Her and her sister, Elisandra, have a lovely sibling relationship.

When she's fourteen, which is about for the first third of the book, she acquires a crush on Bryan, the handsome git prince engaged to Elisandra.

Well, time passes. Corie begins to see that not everything at Castle Auburn is happy and pleasant. She grows up from a young naive girl who knew very little about the place she spent her summers at and the people who spent them there with her.

The crush that Corie has on Bryan is effectively "crushed" when she realizes that he is a git. He fathered a son and takes no responsibility, leading to the death of both the mother and the son.

She has always had a close friendship with a young-but-older-than-her nobleman at Castle Auburn. Kent is sweet and very kind to both Corie and Elisnadra. In fact, for most of the book, Corie thinks that Elisandra and Kent are in love. She begs Kent to marry Elisandra and get her away from Bryan and the miserable life that Sandra will surely live if her and Bryan got married. Kent refuses.

Of course, her and Kent end up together. It felt a little rushed in that for the large majority of the book, Corie thinks that Kent is in love with her sister. She does start to have "feelings" for him before he professes his love for her. But still..

Content: political intrigue amongst secondary meaningless characters, by which I mean people having affairs, out of wedlock pregnancy, etc. It wasn't enough to make me squirm. Nothing too in-your-face.