Books Make Me Happy

Exotic treasure thief tangles with nerdy-but-hot archeologist. It kinda sounds like a story you've heard before. However when Toni, the thief, meets Ben, the archeologist, things don't quite end up the way you imagine. Stealing an ancient box, housing precious gemstone pendants is Toni's goal. However a moment of curiousity plunges both Toni and Ben into a unexpected battle involving dragons, vampires, werewolves, and demons.Amethyst Bound is a very unique take on dragon mythology. The binding of the human to the dragon was very imaginative. And the inner dialogue was both touching and, at times, hysterical. There is still so much to learn about how the relationship works, and what can and can't be done, but it's a very interesting concept. It appears that this will be a series and possibly have as many as six more books (count based purely on my interpretation of what's going on in the story, we'll see if I'm right, lol) so I'm sure we'll get some clarification along the way.The characters, Toni, Ben, and Amethyst are all very different from each other. It was nice to see some of their individual quirks showing highlighted in the story. Shannon did a good job creating characters I cared about in such a short amount of time.Speaking of a short amount of time. One of the things that bothered me about the book was the pacing. I'm not used to reading short stories. Most all of what I've read in the past have been 200-300+ pages, so I'm sure that has everything to do with my feeling that things were rushed in this story. Toni's acceptance of the situation, although it's forced on her, seemed a little too easy. Yes, she freaked a little, and yes, she knows there's nothing she can do to change it, but she just seemed to go against her "me against the world" persona entirely too easily. And the romantic relationship between Toni and Ben progressed too quickly for my taste. It was hot, and fun to read, to be sure, but considering the whole story lasted only a couple of days, it happened way too fast for me. I think I would have been completely fine with all the elements of the story if it had just been a bit longer. There is so much that could have been explored to lengthen the story and allow for some much needed adjustment for Toni and Amethyst, and some relationship building for Toni and Ben. All in all, I really enjoyed the book. It was a quick read, and it wasn't like anything else I'd ever read. I'm looking forward to the next part of the story.***on a side note... LOVE LOVE LOVE the cover :-) **