Review: Stoneheart by Cate Corvin

Stoneheart by Cate Corvin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Entertaining Gargoyle Based Reverse Harem

You don’t get many gargoyle based romance books. It’s rare. This one was a little different, which I liked. Gargoyles and humans have lived alongside each other for centuries, even though it’s a wary truce at best. Gargoyles have a range of different powers depending on the stone heart they have, for example Onyx hearts are able to shield and protect, Diamonds are able to tell truth from lie etc. The different houses are always in conflict, but this is kept away from the humans because their destructive capabilities would reflect badly on them in the media.

One unique part to this story is the idea of stonehearts, which are humans gifted with the heart of a deceased gargoyle. The gargoyle’s heart replaces their own and they gain the magic the heart held previously. They don’t get the strength or the wings of a full blood, but they do get the magic.

When Zara, a cop rescues a gargoyle baby she comes into the sights of gargoyle billionaire Damien who decides that she is the perfect host for a very valuable stone heart. He does not ask her permission. Her life is irrevocably changed.

This is quite a complex plot with lots of flash backs to the time before the story starts, which explains a lot about Zara’s past. Eventually the flashbacks tie in to the current storyline and it’s done very well. Despite the flashbacks the plot is fairly quickly paced and the back and forth doesn’t seem to slow things down as the flashbacks are often intense instances.

The characters, other than Zara, are a little underdeveloped with only sketches of their past, in fact with Sawyer, Zara’s partner on the force, there is very little said about his past at all. His whole purpose in the story is to be a foil for Zara, despite being a major part of the book.

I do feel that the world building could have been a little better with more explanation about the Accords which define gargoyle society’s behaviour and the history of gargoyle and human relations, but these are not major things and they do not hold back the book. The end of the book also seems to hint at future books set in this world, so maybe it will get fleshed out a bit more, if that is the case.

Overall I enjoyed this book and would happily read another book in this series.

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