"Overall worth reading and very hot."
Reviewed by Emily Rowe
Posted November 5, 2010
Erotic Paranormal
Celeste buys a crystal she was entranced by not knowing that her life will never be the same again. In the course of cleaning it, she releases Zuran, a genie cursed within the crystal. Now Celeste has three days to make three wishes and in the process gets more than she bargained for with the CRYSTAL GENIE.
Zuran dislikes all women and when Celeste frees him from his prison he shows those feelings by changing Celeste's appearances to suit him. Considering the story starts with a very strong female voice his changes don't go over so well. Come to find out a female genie, Atia, imprisoned him and he is really angry at her.
Celeste has three wishes and three days to make them, but must make at least one wish every twenty-four hours or 'poof' Zuran is trapped back into the crystal. Her first wish leads to the 'oh my god what are we going to do now' moment. Her second leads to 'bring it on' all the way up to 'oh my god, I'm about to have my head handed to me-I have to do something' point of the story. And her third leads to 'I thought I was doing the right thing, but I'm a damsel in distress' point.
Overall the relationship between Celeste and Zuran in the CRYSTAL GENIE by Opal Carew is hot and worth a read. But the strength of voice and imagery for the characters isn't consistent. One of the biggest issues I had was that it was never made clear if Celeste reverted to her original appearance. In spite of these issues, I would like to see what becomes of Atia and her relationship, as well as Celeste's sister. SUMMARYHave you ever wished you could find a magic lamp and--
poof!-- a genie would appear before you offering wishes? Be
careful what you wish for!Celeste feels a special draw to
a beautiful quartz crystal she sees in her favorite store.
When she brings it home, she finds herself staring into its
liquid depths at a small imperfection that makes the stone
so mesmerizing. She polishes off a fingerprint marring the
surface and a man-all granite hard muscle and starkly
sensual good looks-appears before her. The genie of the
crystal. Zurvan. As soon as Zurvan sees Celeste. a woman!
... rage blazes through him. He does NOT trust women. He
was imprisoned, tortured and cursed by Atia, a woman who
claims she loves him yet punishes him because he can't love
her back. Zurvan tamps down his anger and offers Celeste
her three wishes. Celeste hardly believes she is
face-to-face with a real live genie and feels out of her
depth with the highly sensual, overwhelmingly masculine man
who is nothing like the willing-to-please genie she imagines
from fairy tales. Although this man is to serve her, she
feels he is the one in control. Not only that, there is
something about this man that seems vaguely familiar. Like a
hazy image from a dream. When they both fall prey to the
white hot attraction between them, Zurvan promises her the
greatest pleasure she will ever experience. and
delivers! Celeste soon finds she must remind herself she
does not trust love. She has watched both her mother and
sister stay with men who mistreat them because they say they
love them. Celeste figures that if that's love, who needs
it? What their behavior has really convinced her of,
though, is that there's no way she would ever be able to
recognize real love. As Celeste goes through the process
of making her wishes, she and Zurvan discover some
unsettling truths about both their pasts. Now she knows
that when he returns to his imprisonment in the crystal-and
there is nothing she can do to stop it-she will be left to
endure a life of interminable loneliness missing the man she
was meant to be with forever.
EXCERPTNo excerpt available.
BOOK SERIES
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