Book Review: The Carnelian Legacy By Cheryl Koevoet

Title: The Carnelian Legacy

Series: Carnelian #1

Author: Cheryl Koevoet

Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy / Romance

My Rating: ★ ★

Synopsis:

Marisa MacCallum always believed that the man of her dreams was out there somewhere. The problem is—he’s in another dimension.

After the death of her father, eighteen-year-old Marisa's life is on the verge of imploding. She seeks comfort on her daily ride through the woods of Gold Hill, but when a mysterious lightning storm strikes, she is hurled into the ancient, alternate dimension of Carnelia where she is discovered by the arrogant but attractive nobleman, Ambassador Darian Fiore.

Stranded in a world teeming with monsters, maniacs and medieval knights, Marisa is forced to join Darian on a dangerous mission to negotiate peace with his cousin and archenemy, Savino da Rocha. Along the way, she starts to see Darian's softer side and finds herself falling in love. But once she learns that he is locked into an arranged marriage, her heart shatters.

When Savino falls for her charms and demands her hand in exchange for peace, Marisa is faced with an impossible choice: marry the enemy of the man she loves or betray them both and become the catalyst for a bloody war. 

We start off the story with Marisa MacCallum attending the funeral of her father with her uncle and younger brother. Once they return home Marisa decides she needs some time to herself so goes for a ride in the woods near her home, however while on her ride she finds herself transported to an alternate dimension where she meets up with Darian and Arrie who take her with them on their journey to discuss a peace deal with Darian's cousin Savino.

I will say at the beginning I was really enjoying this, I liked Marisa as a main character and the descriptions of Carnelia and the politics were really interesting. Once Marisa meets Darian and Arrie she changes and I found myself getting more and more frustrated with her. I didn't like the relationship between Marisa and Darian because all the back and forth about how they can't be together but can't stay away just got so repetitive. Arrie was definitely the bright spot of the story and his friendship with Marisa was great.

The other thing that kind of pulled me from the story was the Christian themes that snuck up about half way through the book. Don't get me wrong I don't have a problem with a bit of religion in the books that I read but once it came up there was a lot of it. I do feel that if I had known how prevelant the Christian themes in this book were I would not have picked it up, but nowhere in the synopsis was this mentioned.

I really wanted to like this as the premise sounded like something I would enjoy and the beginning was really promising but it just didn't pull together for me. I might still read book 2 as I do own it but I'm not in any rush to pick it up.

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