Rating: 2.5 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novel
Elias Mayher isn’t doing well, despite what he tells his friend Irene. His parents have been dead for just a few months and he is plagued by horrific nightmares. Elias hasn’t slept properly in weeks and the strain of it all is starting to catch up with him. Every night, he dreams of a tiger with purple eyes that attacks him without mercy. He doesn’t know why it’s happening, but he isn’t sure how much longer he can can keep going without decent sleep.
Cedric Galeson, the Crown Prince of Falsere, thought he’d lost Elias forever. The man was supposed to be dead. Cedric had grieved for months over the loss of his chosen mate and only now has it been revealed to him that El is still alive, but with no memory of their childhood together or the promises they’d made. When Cedric ventures beyond the borders of Falsere to find El, he does so suspecting there are darker forces plotting against them. He’ll have to convince El of the truth so they can confront their enemy together. And only then will they have a chance at a happily ever after.
Amethyst Isle is part of the Beyond the Realm: Remember series. These books are written by different authors and can be read as standalones. Unfortunately, Amethyst Isle suffered quite a bit from poor world building, a flimsy plot, and characters that failed to really make much of an impact.
Elias and Cedric are sweet enough and their interactions tend to have plenty of playful banter, but there’s isn’t much depth to them. They aren’t quite one dimensional, but they don’t read as fully formed creations either. It was hard for me to connect to either of them because of this and I didn’t feel invested in their story. I think had the storyline been stronger and the characters been given more time to develop and nurture their relationship, things might have been different.
Quite often while reading Amethyst Isle, I felt as though I was trying to play catch up with a story that was already in progress. As readers, we are given a bit of background information on Elias and Cedric, but it isn’t enough to really establish them as a couple. There seemed to be an expectation that readers were just sort of supposed to figure it out as they went along and, as a result, I was nearly always disconnected. It didn’t help that the story was pretty weak. There aren’t too many layers happening and while that works in some situations, this wasn’t one of them. So the threat against Cedric and Elias read as unrealistic and there weren’t any real stakes associated with the danger they were experiencing. When you add in the lack of world building, Amethyst Isle felt only surface deep. There was no heart to the characters or the story it was trying to tell. Now that said, I will give the author credit for a unique take on shifters and the idea of using dreams and memories to convey warnings and danger. These were two of the stronger parts of the overall story.
Amethyst Isle was a quick and easy read with just a superficial smattering of fantasy and shifter themes sprinkled in. The main characters, Elias and Cedric, are minimally constructed and not particularly engaging. The story is weak and while there are some interesting aspects, the overall effect didn’t really work. I wanted to like Amethyst Isle, but I’d have to recommend giving this one a pass.
