{Review} The Thorn and the Sinking Stone by C.J Duninski

Posted by Donna
Release Date: March 10th, 2015
Finished Date: March 1st, 2015

Publishers: Entangled Teen
Genre: YA, Fantasy, Paranormal, Romance
Source: For Review
Format: eARC

Pages: 247

Buy: Amazon UK / Amazon US 

Warring families. Forbidden love. And danger they can’t escape…

Daggers. Roses. Cowboys. Boat Men. Survivors of Earth's Last War, four “families” vie to rule the dreary streets of Rain City through violence and blood. Valencia Hara, Princess of the wealthy Black Roses, is raised in warrior ways with sharpened steel. But she is no ordinary Rose. She is Cursed—tainted with the ability to see seconds into the future…

To avenge his father's death, Sebastian Leold, of the rival gang Two Daggers, must face off against the Black Princess, he with his dagger, she with her katana sword. Yet a secret from a shared past leaves him unable to kill beautiful Valencia; nor can she kill him. For they once knew each other beyond their blood feud…and they have more secrets in common than they know.

But in a world filled with vengeance and violence, there can be no room for love… 

The Review: As soon as I heard about The Thorn and the Sinking Stone I was immediately curious about it. I have to be honest when I say I hadn’t seen it around the blogging world and for that reason I was hesitant. But no matter what my curiosity go the better of me and I decided to take a chance on the story. I wanted to love this book – I did. But sometimes taking chances doesn’t always pay off and unfortunately this was the case for me and The Thorn and the Sinking Stone. 

 I had really high hopes with the book because it was clearly based Romeo and Juliet and I love that story, no matter how sad it is. While it’s clearly not the same as Shakespears’ tale The Thorn and the Sinking Stone is a story full of gang rivals set in a dystopian world with a paranormal aspect and it’s a world that if I’m honest confused me and wasn’t really built up enough. 

 For the first 20% of the story I quickly flew through the pages but soon enough I slowly started to lose interest. I found the more I read the more things didn’t add up and there were several plot holes. The world that was created was a good idea but poorly executed and not enough back ground information so as a reader, you completely understand how things are. People just accept things, like the Watchmen and the Cursed. I felt like although the main story is about The Black Roses and Two Daggers, there are too many other players in the story, that really could have been left out and maybe introduced into a sequel. There was also a lot of cold-hearted violence in the book which I think would look great on a big screen – if that’s what you’re into. 

 Sebastian and Valencia were the reason I kept reading. I wanted to see how their story would come together and while I liked it in most part I still couldn’t help feeling disappointed that their romance wasn’t as epic as I was hoping it was going to be. It was a little bland and in the end, I felt like the romance could have been left out because both characters were stronger without their new-found romance. 

 In all, The Thorn and the Sinking Stone wasn’t a great read for me but it’s one I’m glad I read because otherwise I would have always been curious about it. 

Thank you to Entangled Teen for giving me the opportunity to review this book in exchange for an honest review.