Jacob Proffitt's Reviews > Summers at Castle Auburn

This was interesting, but not entirely satisfying. I really liked Corie, and her inner circle of friends were outstanding. The world around them is kind of a crap-pile, though, and that wore on me.

The book is broken into three parts, each a summer that Corie spends at the eponymous castle. In the first section, she is 14 and naïve and that's where we get the basic setup. And it's where we see Bryan, the young, and very handsome, prince. And we get hints of things that are to come and the existing tensions that will no doubt flourish in the coming story.

The second section is where I ran into trouble. The sections are roughly equal in length, but this part is nearly unrelentingly bleak. Corie is 17 and finds that Bryan is a complete monster and Corie's sister, Elisandra, is looking at a marriage to someone casually cruel and unfeeling. And the only thing worse is knowing that he'll also be the king when he comes of age as well. So him reaching his majority is going to imperil the stability of the kingdom and make someone we know and love miserable beyond endurance. I'll be honest, I skimmed a page or two in this section.

Layered into the story at the same time is the plight of the Aliora—fae-like beings who are kind and compassionate, even with their captors (for they are held in slavery enforced by the metal bands they wear to suppress their magic). We see their suffering and their kindness despite it and it becomes clear that holding them as slaves is a deep cruelty that begs redress. In the second part, in addition to seeing the misery of the court in expectation of Bryans eventual ascension we have her awaking to the casual evil that is this enslavement. Which provides a dilemma as the uncle Corie loves, Jaxon, is the primary hunter of Aliora and the single biggest provider of these slaves. As the horror in her grows at their plight, Corie has to figure out what that means about her relationship with Jaxon and how can she continue to love him knowing the misery that lies squarely at his door?

The third section ramps the misery up as the expected marriage is planned. I expected to hate it even more but it helped knowing that it was the last section and seeing Corie begin to take action was a good antidote to that despair. And it isn't long before the pace kicks up and the story truly comes into its own. I won't bother with details, even in spoilers, but things work out very satisfactory and I was more than content with the end even though things slow for the last little bit. The ending is so good, in fact, that it tempted me to up this to five stars.

In the end, I'm keeping it at four because of the slog in the middle. And because I'm still not sure what to think about Corie's uncle, Jaxon, and at least some of that is that he was allowed to simply fall out of the narrative. Still, it's a solid four stars and it ends on a definite high.

A note about Chaste: There's no sex in the story, though infidelity and its consequences appear. We get some kissing, but that's all that's on screen.