Reviews

Emeralds & Ashes by Leila Rasheed

bookishnicole's review

3.0

I think I would have enjoyed this more at the time of the original publication, but as it is, this feels very aggressively like a Downtown Abbey fan fic. If you don't mind me, I'm off for a re-watch.

kitnotmarlowe's review

adventurous lighthearted medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

dude why was this actually kind of good...there will still a whole bunch of flaws, of course, but this was the best of the series and i almost want to round up and give it a full 3 stars....a Redemption Arc.

 THE GOOD 

• the writing is better! i said this last time, and i'll say it again! it's still chunky in places, and as always there are too many similes (far less!!), but the dialogue was quite strong and most importantly, there were actually Themes and Things To Say. a few lines i was so impressed i raised my eyebrows like a dour 1940s newspaperman who isn't used to being surprised by quality work
• after two whole books of being the most chaste couple in existence, sebastian and oliver Finally get to play tonsil hockey on par with all of the straight couples! they go to a queer pub! the word is actually used! their ending is very reminiscent of  maurice in the 'screw society we're going to be happy in The Wilderness'
• speaking of saying 'screw society', loved charlotte telling her mother to fuck off, becoming Nice, saving lives, meeting a Roguish American Pilot, and damning all society and her mother's expectations to hell to go live in loving poverty with him
• on that note, flint is actually quite funny 
• FINALLY ADA'S SMART NOW. she gets to actually use her Big Oxford Brain to legally finesse her estate out of a smarmy fortune hunter's hands
• she also ends the series refusing to get married (for now) and without any sort of man except for her future employer....Nice!
• i should say that the lead-up to ada unlocking her brainpower is frankly kind of hysterical. after literal years of having an Illicit Affair, she and ravi agree that a life together would be miserable for them both. they break up, have sex, ada's  late to her father's funeral as a result, and then she outright tells georgiana about it, saying she doesn't regret it and that she's not a "fallen woman" or anything and them bam! she finally gets to be intelligent
• FINALLY WE KNOW WHERE SOMERTON COURT IS! when characters go into the neighbouring village, they can see birmingham's smokestacks in the distance. there's also mentions of a lady amersham who "bought up all the dry goods in shropshire [...] and is now coming over to our county." birmingham's boundaries expanded in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, spilling over from the county warwickshire to worcestershire and staffordshire, BOTH of which share borders with shropshire, case CLOSED
• i am neither english nor a geographer, so there's a chance i'm wrong but leila rasheed makes a Grevious North American Geography Error (to be detailed below) so we're even.
• ada/michael/georgiana were a very fun team

THE BAD

• one again, the writing, while still better, isn't quite up to snuff with the majority of the other ya historical fiction i've read, which is a Lot. too many weak similes (dude maybe i just don't like similes, i think that's what we're finding)
• does ada really need to be involved with at least two men every book? let the poor girl have a break. can she not see her lecturer as an intellectual equal without wanting to go to bed with him?
• there are nearly 70 chapters and i'd wager that 10 or less of them are spent on sebastian's storyline. he's gone for enormous swaths of the novel fighting in wwii for self-loathing reasons, and, as usual, the reader is privy to hardly any of it. all i'm asking for is an even distribution of povs, but at least they didn't occasionally change mid-chapter like the last book
• there's a moment in one of sebastian's early chapters with oliver that's just....painfully heterosexual...terribly awkward
• also about sebastian: there's a little bit of clumsy interior monologue where he acknowledges that he has no place in society now that he's been outed and feels himself to be a burden/can't imagine a life where he doesn't have the privileges and invisibility of the upper-crust and so goes to war because he thinks it's the only way he'll be useful and because he wants to die. i guess a constant stream of 'my life is shit and i'm going to die in a shithole in france but that's fine because i want to' would be tonally inconsistent with the rest of the book, but it makes his double realizations that he actually wants to live and doesn't need society to be happy kind of null because the reader doesn't see him actually express that self-loathing
• GEORGIANA KISSES HER STEPBROTHER!! GEORGIE P L E A S E 
• why was this a running thread throughout the series. what an absolutely bananas hill to choose to die on
• not...every...character...needs...a...romantic...relationship...
• earl westlake and one of the former servants die, but there should have been a higher body count! it's world war 1! i maintain that fiona should have died of grief after her husband died and two of her children ran away to france with little chance of survival. mostly because she fails to have any substance or purpose as a character other than sending charlotte bitchy letters.
• however, it's only 1915. more people can die before the war is over.
• yes i did enjoy charlotte's arc, however i think it would have been more effective if she'd been Properly Nasty and Cruel in the previous two books as opposed to just petty and unlucky in love
• rose isn't there at ALL. considering she's a main character and was the focus of the last book, this is uhhh sus
• i FORGOT about her. nobody mentions her at all even though she's stranded in the mediterranean with a new baby!!! when she talks about her last year (incl. surviving a shipwreck and getting help from the english embassy in spain) it sounds so exciting and engaging and I Would Like to See It
• rose's husband should have been killed on the front. not really for plot reasons i just think he's insufferable
• also the eastern front of wwi is woefully underrepresented in fiction so it would have been neat to get a sense of what exactly was going on there
• with ravi's unceremonious exit, all the characters are white people except for rose's maid who shows up for one line in two scenes and doesn't talk. also the discussions of indian independence in the previous books were quite interesting and i think would have been good for young readers who have little to no previous knowledge of the subject
• evil bastard cousin? uncle? william swindles ada out of her inheritance and then literally the next chapter he and his entire family are killed when their ship to america is torpedoed. at least space some events out, damn!

the UHHH

• flint mcallister comes from "a ranch in texas" but then says his father "lost the fortune in flagstaff. the fortune and the range." flagstaff, which is in....  ARIZONA. ARIZONA AND TEXAS DON'T EVEN SHARE A BORDER WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED HERE
• the other books begin with oscar wilde quotes as epigrams, but this one doesn't?? did leila rasheed run out of appropriate quotes?
• the ending makes sense ig but it's veery abrupt 
• if i ever have to read another scene where characters kiss and it's described as passionate i am going to  throw myself into the sea . every fucking time, y'all

i guess the  tl,dr is that i was really expecting this book to be absolute horseshit based on the last one and the fact that the paperback run was cancelled, and then it wasn't and i was pleasantly surprised. i'm also peeved on leila rasheed's behalf that this book is so hard to find and print copies literally do not exist, it's not even that bad! why am i weirdly moved to write her an email saying that i'm sorry this happened to her and that i liked her books more than i was expecting to. 

guardianofthebookshelf's review

5.0

I'm so excited, but also very bummed that this is the final At Somerton book. I could read three more books about Ada, Rose, and the others.

Grade: A
Release date: Goodreads says February 19th; however, in the email from the publicist, she told me January 6th.
This e-galley was provided by Disney-Hyperion in exchange for an honest review.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: That synopsis is awfully misleading and spoiler-filled, considering the Earl of Westlake doesn't pass away until the end of act one. Additionally, it led me to believe we'd see Rose's POV and we never do. But that's me nitpicking a bit. My real criticisms entail the POV jumps and some of the romantic relationships. The POV changed nearly every chapter and there were a lot of characters who were seen. I would've liked to stick with one of them for longer than a chapter. Also, I wasn't happy with how all the relationships ended. I won't spoil too much but there are three things I want to address.
1. There are two characters who use the word love awfully fast; I did sense them developing feelings for each other, but I'm not sure love is the word I would've used so soon.
2. Georgiana has had a crush on Michael since book 1 and it's a bit weird to me, seeing as how they're step-siblings.
3. There was a character who was set up as Ada's love interest and I seriously thought there would've been a hint of a happily ever after with them (considering this is the final book in the series). I'm okay with Ada being independent and unmarried, but if you set up a relationship...don't leave your readers hanging!
I did enjoy, however, the perspectives of World War I that were in Emeralds & Ashes. There aren't too many books that feature the first world war, and I liked that we saw nurses, soldiers, and families affected. Also, one of my favorite parts of the entire series, and especially this book, has been Charlotte's character development. She used to be selfish and horrid and now she's loving, giving, and brave. Her happiness was a bright spot in the tragedy that was most of the Averley/Templeton family's existence in Emeralds & Ashes. Ada and Georgiana were great, as always. Those girls have lost both their parents, and they're still strong and great characters.
Language and romance are mild. Violence and injuries are perhaps the worst (descriptions of some of the things Charlotte sees in a hospital, what Sebastian faces in the war, etc.).

The Verdict: Such a great conclusion, although I wish the series wasn't ending here! I want more At Somerton adventures.

sarahsbookstack's review

4.0

I loved getting to read the conclusion to this series. I think this is probably my least favorite of the 3, but it was still good!
I wish the publisher hadn't decided to only publish this as an ebook. I probably would have bought the series in hardcovers if they had done all 3 that way. Oh well.