** I WAS GIVEN THIS BOOK FOR MY READING PLEASURE ** 

 ~ 

 Beneath the Indigo Sky (Unexpected Love, Book 1) 

 by Rayne Hawthorne, D.W. Michaels 

★★★☆☆ 

 323 Pages 

 1st person, dual character POV 

 Triggers: intense grief and depression; suicidal ideation; death of two background characters; violent on-page homophobic assault; amnesia; 

 ~ 

 Beneath the Indigo Sky is the first book I've read by two new-to-me authors. Unfortunately, it just wasn't my taste. I feel like the book was split into two different writing “voices”; one was overly flowery and poetic, while the other was more focused on telling the story. My main problem with the book is that it spends 99.9% of the time telling us what's happening rather than showing us. 

 ~ 

 TRIGGERS 

 I was really pleased to see there was an entire page dedicated to trigger warnings. However, I feel it wasn't utilised properly. It mentions an on-page assault, but this wording is so non-specific that I didn't know whether this meant a beating or a sexual assault. It turns out to be a fairly violent homophobic attack. 

 There was a mention of “passive si” → this, particularly, felt inappropriate. After spending an entire page listing the triggers, it chooses the most vague method of “passive si” which is a phrase that not everyone will understand. I even Googled it, just to make sure it meant what I thought it did. I don't understand why the author listed everything yet resorted to a shorthand for something as serious as suicidal ideation. 

 Despite the ambiguous phrasing, I disagree with the suicidal ideation being passive. Jayce spends the entire book constantly dropping hints – he doesn't want to wake up tomorrow, he wishes he'd died instead of Jordyn, he can't go on alone, he can't deal with life – and it's very clear that he's not at all passive. I think what the author meant by “passive si” is that Jayce never actually attempts suicide, but he's very much in the emotional headspace of wanting to, and because it's such a long-running concept throughout the book, I feel that calling it passive is very misleading and diminishes the immense grief that Jayce is going through. 

There's a listing in the triggers that “There are also minor paranormal elements that are left deliberately open to reader interpretation.” which – honestly – feels like a cop out. I don't want to get sucked into a story that puts a plot element centre stage, only to never explain or resolve that plot point. As with the other triggers, it's so vaguely worded that it's unclear what it refers to. Calling them “minor” is also misleading, because it's not minor. It's a major, central part of Namid's life, which is never answered or resolved. 

 ~ 

 CHARACTERS 

 We start the book learning about Namid, who was found naked on the side of the road, with no memory of his past. He was found ten years ago, but still has no memory of who he was or where he came from. There's a strong hint that he's something alien or some wish granted by the Aurora, but that question is NEVER answered in this book, and apparently never will be. He was found by the local funeral director, Ken, who took him in. Now he works in the funeral home. 

 At the start of the book, Jayce is preparing to bury his twin brother, who died in a road accident recently. Coincidentally, his parents also died in a car accident years ago (I think about 8-10 years). Now he's all alone, running a business they used to run together, feeling utterly desolate. In fact, he spends a good 50% of the book deep in depression with only the occasional glimpse of recovery. 

 Surprisingly, other than Jayce and Namid, there is no real on-page character other than Ken, who is basically Namid's father figure. Even then, he's barely on page until after the halfway point, where he has a minor accident and needs to be taken care of for a few days. 

 There are really no other characters in the book. Jordyn – the dead twin – is never on page, which I feel is a total miss, because although Jayce talks about him, we never get to see him other than in Jayce's memories, which are extremely vague and short mentions of “the boy who played football, the man who watched TV”. I never got a sense of who Jordyn was, despite the many, many, many, many times that Jayce claimed he was the other half of his soul. 

 There are random neighbours, customers and locals mentioned, but they never really interact with either of the MC's beyond a two second contact, and never in a way that requires a conversation. 

 In fact, the ONLY conversations that appear on page are between Jayce and Namid, or occasionally with Ken. There are no other characters with dialogue in the entire book. 

 ~ 

 FORMATTING 

 There is a problem with some of the formatting throughout. I bought this book, which means it's not an ARC issue. The front matter is wonky in terms of some parts being in a massive font, with others being in a smaller, regular font. Some chapter headers are central, while others are left aligned. 

 The use of character art at every POV change is nice to look at, but doesn't really add much, because each POV change comes with a written note as well. 

 The first scene break happens at 32%, where there's an Aurora artwork to signify the break. This only happens twice. 

 There are no timeline markers throughout the book. Sometimes we'll find out that an entire month has gone by, between one chapter and the next, but we don't find out until the end of the chapter. It would be more useful to have that pointed out at the start, because the timeline chops and changes so much, with the two MC's only meeting up every other weekend for a while. 

 Sometimes there are large chunks of 1 page or ½ a page, where the dialogue and text are separated into different paragraphs, despite being about the same person and belonging together in one paragraph. This often makes it harder to figure out who is talking to whom, which requires re-reading passages or pages to figure out the context of what is being said. When each dialogue only requires one line and the following descriptor – like the character thinking or doing something – only takes one line, there's no reason to keep them separated onto different lines, especially during a conversation with another person, where it's not instantly clear who is speaking. 

 ~ 

 WRITING STYLE 

 Personally, I wasn't a fan of the hugely flowery writing style. I would say that the first half is much worse for this than the second, but it is something that keeps creeping in throughout. 

 I found it quite strange that it took 11% before there was a single word of dialogue. Before that, there's a lot of vaguely worded “so-and-so said they were sorry for my loss” but there's never actually any spoken dialogue on page until 11%. 

 Similarly, outside of the POV markers at the start of each chapter, NEITHER Jayce or Namid's names are used within the story until 15%, which is a long time! 

 There are a lot of times when the POV switches between Jayce and Namid, but it just rehashes the same scene from a different character's view. A lot of the time, this adds nothing to the story, except the opportunity to spend more time with flowery descriptions of thoughts and feelings. 

 The flowery style wouldn't be so bad if EVERY PAGE wasn't the same. This kind of style is more effective when used sparingly, rather than spending the ENTIRE first 10% of the book this way. 

 One of my biggest problems is that some parts of the story are so flowery that you can't escape having at least one paragraph about one specific thought – like the colour of someone's eyes – but then you get some really vague mentions of other things that you actually want to know more about. 

 For example, Jayce sees a man with indigo eyes standing in front of him, and it's left at “he” and “him”, never clarified with even the vague “the guy from the funeral home”. Even this quick mention of how he knew Namid from earlier, though he doesn't know his name yet, would have helped, but somehow we're miraculously supposed to know that the man with indigo eyes is Namid. I get that he's described as having indigo eyes at one point, but it's in a vague way “a blue so dark it's barely still blue. Navy or indigo.” that means I completely glossed over it. It's actually never even mentioned again until this incident where Jayce meets the guy with “indigo eyes”. 

 Sometimes it just feels like the author(s) is allergic to using the character's names at all. 

 The story uses Namid's ability to feel other people's emotions as a way to explore how other people feel, but in a telling way, never a showing way. It really puts a lengthy distance between the reader and the emotions the author is trying to invoke. 

 “I know he's not okay, and I know he doesn't feel the same way about me. I don't mean I know that in the way people always say,” - sentences like this last one, to qualify meaning, really aren't necessary but they're used to just give the author license to drift into lengthy, poetical, flowery writing. 

 I wasn't overly keen on the way that Jayce's grief was explored. For me, it was VERY one dimensional, like he had no choice but to be severely depressed, lacking the will to live, without any hint of joy until Namid walks into his life. It's like the only reason he's allowed to function is because Namid has come along to make everything better/easier and give him a distraction from his grief. However, this isn't how grief happens. It's not a block of time where there's nothing but dark clouds, depression and not wanting to do things or go anywhere. It very much comes across like Jayce isn't allowed to be anything but wholly negative until Namid enters his life. 

 I also feel like the way his emotions are written feel wrong for grief. For example, there's A LOT of repetition of “he forgets to be hurt/shattered/broken”. However, using “forgets” feels wrong in this case, because that implies it's deliberately, that it's a choice. What Jayce is feeling is neither of those things. It would be more appropriate to say “he forgets that he's hurt/shattered/broken”. In little ways like this, I feel like the author chose the more flowery, descriptive way of explaining the emotions without acknowledging how that reads or comes across. 

 The story is listed as slow burn, however I don't agree. For 50%, Namid is in a one-sided love with Jayce, who just wants to be friends without even a hint of attraction. Then, suddenly, Namid looks elsewhere for a physical release, because he's apparently so desperate he needs to hook-up with a stranger at a bar, where Jayce sees him and conveniently gets a flash of realisation that he's been in love with Namid all along. It's all very convenient and sudden, that doesn't at all relate to what he's been thinking/feeling until now. Then they have their first kiss at 65%, which ends in 67-90% being sex and flirting, with A LOT of telling of anything that's outside of the bedroom. 

 ~ 

 OVERALL 

 I would probably have DNF'd the book early on, if I hadn't agreed to read/review Book 2. However, I ended up skim-reading at 65%, because the story was just very much the same at the end as it had been at the beginning, with the middle the only part that felt like it had a proper flow and split between showing/telling, though even that was minimal. 

 I never felt the deep abiding love for Jordyn that Jayce kept harping on about. Because we never got to see him or Jayce on page together – not even in a flashback, that would have helped give that emotional pull – which meant the emotional impact the author was aiming for never really materialised. 

 I really didn't buy the whole “the entire town hates Namid for no reason” plot point that ran throughout the book. It felt like a convenient excuse and explanation for the eventual, violent homophobic attack at the end of the book. This is the one event that sort of rounds off the story, forcing the two MC's to confront the attitudes of the locals and make a big change. However, until the final attack, there is no real reason for this change or the red ribbon that it ties around the plot. 

 I find the ending was all neatly wrapped up, but it happens so quickly. 

 For me, I felt like Namid and Jayce both had a serious hero complex. Jayce wanted to save Namid from the locals and their opinions of him, even though his attempt to do that only ended up putting him in more danger. Namid wanted to 'cure' Jayce of his grief, doing everything possible to take over tasks for him rather than helping him through dealing with them, such as when he takes over Jordyn's part of the business. Though some of the things they do for each other do help, they're more about just taking over those tasks rather than helping the person cope emotionally so they can do it themselves in the future. 

 I was disappointed with the ending. Finding that letter in Jordyn's belongings to introduce the main character of the next book felt so completely out of left field and overly convenient. There had been ZERO mention of this person in Jordyn's life before now, nor the fact that this letter writer is obviously male (considering the end sneak peek of Book 2) and the inclusion here really felt like an after thought. I definitely feel like, if the letter was found at the beginning or the middle of the book, it would have made so much more sense. Jayce could have emotionally struggled over its meaning, felt like he didn't know Jordyn as well as he thought, which would make the revelations probably in the next book more powerful. However, tacking it on at the end feels like bad planning and lazy plotting. 

 Overall, I feel like the book has a lot of potential, but it's never realised. The unusual plot is wasted by a sloppy execution. It really needed a good editor to say “reign in the flowery speech, fix the beginning, explain Namid's origins and be more clear”, because these were the biggest problems that ruined the potential of the book. It needed to be cleaner, with more showing, less telling; more character development that is not confined to Namid's ability to feel other people's emotions. The book relied too much on Namid's mystery and abilities instead. I also feel like it needed a plot point that wasn't just Jayce's grief or Namid's mysterious origins. 

 This is a book with a great concept that fails to meet the expectations or reach it's full potential.