I thought I’d start solidly in my wheelhouse for my first liveblog review. Oh, YA Dystopia — my love/hate for you knows no bounds. For every Giver, Uglies, and Hunger Games, there are hundreds of bland books with Walls and Tests and Outsiders and Lots of Capital Letters. And I read them. Oh, how I read them. Even as I scoff at the latest protagonist with a braid and a yearning for something more, I love the genre to pieces. If only they’d get rid of the damn love triangles.

Anyway, for this first liveblog, I’m going to go in completely blind. This won’t always be the case. There are a few books I’d really like to review chapter by chapter that I’ve read some or all of, and I’ll indicate that whenever I start them. (Just you wait, Divergent. I’m coming for you.)

So! The first victim of Library Liveblogs will be…

The Jewel by Amy Ewing!

Here’s the Amazon blurb, for the curious.

“The Selection meets The Handmaid’s Tale in this darkly riveting debut filled with twists and turns, where all that glitters may not be gold.

The Jewel means wealth, the Jewel means beauty—but for Violet, the Jewel means servitude. Born and raised in the Marsh, Violet finds herself living in the Jewel as a servant at the estate of the Duchess of the Lake. Addressed only by her number—#197—Violet is quickly thrown into the royal way of life. But behind its opulent and glittering facade, the Jewel hides its cruel and brutal truth, filled with violence, manipulation, and death.

Violet must accept the ugly realities of her life . . . all while trying to stay alive. But before she can accept her fate, Violet meets a handsome boy who is also under the Duchess’s control, and a forbidden love erupts. But their illicit affair has consequences, which will cost them both more than they bargained for. And toeing the line between being calculating and rebellious, Violet must decide what, and who, she is willing to risk for her own freedom.”

The Jewel is the first book in The Lone City trilogy, and also has two short story/novella…things that are referred to as books .5 and 1.5 on Goodreads. Because those are in vogue these days, I suppose.

My initial thoughts are under the cut. The first chapter (or two!) will be up tomorrow.

So, the fusion of The Selection and The Handmaid’s Tale immediately sparks my interest, probably more so than the rest of the blurb. I love Handmaid, and though I have mixed feelings about The Selection, I do think a fusion of the two plots could prove very interesting. Dystopias with royalty are quite intriguing to me. Queens in flowing gowns and Elizabethan collars ruthlessly commanding their fleet of drones to suppress the population? Sign me up.

I’m a little dubious about the Jewel that’s mentioned in the title, since that seems like a really weird name for a location I’m assuming is a royal city of some kind. Reading the book will probably enlighten me a bit more on it.

I’m getting a YA Game of Thrones vibe from this, which I dig. A lot. Though the whole ‘forbidden love’ thing is a bit off-putting. Yeah, the sky is blue, the grass is green, YA dystopias have boring romance plots tacked on. We’ll have to see how this one goes. Despite what it may seem, I’m not some anti-love curmudgeon who scoffs at the idea of romance. I’ve just never seen a romance subplot actually work in a dystopian setting. Even Hunger Games, which I consider to be the best dystopian novel of the past decade, couldn’t pull it off.

Bottom line: I’ll either love this or hate this. We’ll have to see which it is.