Sunday, April 22, 2012

Diamond Estates: The Embittered Ruby

"Sixteen-Year-Old Carmen Castillo
Wonders What it Would be Like to
Have a Pair of Ruby Slippers."
Bookworm's Ranking - 4 Worms

Storyline - Carmen just wants her old life back. The only way to do is to have her boyfriend marry her. But the only way she can think of that happening anytime soon is to get pregnant. But when things begin to crash around her, she has no choice but to go to Diamond Estates to change her ways and heal her soul. It is not easy though when she doesn't believe in God or have an interest in the program. Will she find healing or will her old ways keep her from changing?

Author - Nicole O'Dell

Publisher - Barbour

Age Group - 15 and up

Content - Carmen makes a lot of mistakes like tricking her boyfriend and lying without thinking of others but this does change in the end. She also uses birth control. Her she also blames a lot and hates some people. Nate seems like a good guy but his morals are not very Christian (but this is also in the beginning of the book and they are both needing to find God). The Christan growth and message was wonderful and well done.  

Personal Opinion - LOVE the cover art (really like stained glass). A realistic story with a fantastic ending. I believed (even though thinking "Girl, what are you doing?") what Carmen was thinking, feeling, and rationalizing in the beginning when she made plans to get out of her current situation. Even though they were bad decisions, which was clear, it all seemed like how teenagers think today, so what was happening was realistic. But, when Carmen got to Diamond Estates, she did some things that didn't seem like her character before and, the new situations that were started, I didn't feel had enough time to do justice with before the end of the book. Her transformation was a bit quick as well, but very beautiful with a wonderful message in it. All in all, it was a good second book in a series that is well worth the read.

Buy - Amazon

Links - Learn more about the books and author here.

Special Notes - Book 2 in the Diamond Estates series.
Book 1 Review, The Wishing Pearl
Book 3 Review, (Has not been released yet)

Disclaimer - In exchange for an honest review, I received this book for free from the publisher/author through Team Novel Teen.

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