This Same Earth

2.75 stars.

I hate time hops in romance stories. 5 years is too long, Gio was an asshole. He didn't even have a good reason. He says he wanted her to live, but he still reminded her of him every year! How can she move on from him and actually live her life?

Gio pretending he did it for her, but never asked if she wanted it, which he didn't need to do, since it was clear she hated it! He did it so he didn't have to feel guilty, but all he did was make himself into an asshole.

“You have a choice! That’s what all of this was about, giving you a choice.”

Bull. Shit.

I also didn't like the cheating, and that is what happened. Especially emotional cheating. She had a boyfriend. A good guy. He deserved better.

Both Gio and Beatrice annoyed show more me. Beatrice doing the very stupid thing (you will know when you've read it) was just too stupid. Like WTH. Felt like they had it just to force a confrontation with Leo.

This book was kind of a disappointment, but will probably read the next book at some point. show less

A great second entry into this series & no typos here. The story picks up and we find that Giovanni as exiled himself from Beatrice's life by pretty much freezing her out. He sends her occasional plane tickets to visit the house in Chile but he never responds to her messages or anything. This goes on for five, almost six years. It's hard on Beatrice but we get to see her grow in many ways & that was great. Her interests, confidence, career & personal relationships flourish in a good way, even though she hasn't forgotten Giovanni. Her hurt was well crafted & with that pulling against her growth, it was bittersweet to read. I really loved that.

Then Giovanni returns & most of the story is about the two reconnecting as friends and moving show more forward to more. Again, as in the first book, this all feels very organic and real. The depth to the characters doesn't falter here and I was glad of that. I was hoping for more action & involvement in the search for Stephen, Lorenzo's return & they mystery of the books but there are two more installments so I can live with it. They mystery is very engaging & I can't get enough of that. That alone is quite the page-turner for me.

Carywn was fantastic & is one of my favorites of the supporting characters. Deidre was fascinating as well & certainly provided a good bit of perspective for Beatrice. The addition of Benjamin caught me by surprise because I so quickly found him a needed character. I like the added dimension he adds to Giovanni. We know Giovanni raised Caspar but now in this book we get to see him in this capacity & that was quite nice. The epilogue actually made me teary.

I have the next book on my Kindle already so... must get on to that. show less

Ok so maybe the way I feel about this book is my fault. I read the first book A Hidden Fire because it looked interesting and it was a cheap buy on Amazon. I really liked the twist on the vampire genre with the addition of the elemental powers. I really liked B - strong female character who knows what she wants. She has had to work hard to get what she wants. Stands up for herself, etc.
Then she meets Gio and even by the end of book 1 she is still pretty independent and wants to live life her way. I loved the secondary characters - Isadora, Caspar and Carwyn probably more than B and Gio.

Then we get to This Same Earth and here is B getting on with her life. She has made a life for herself, has a job she loves and everything is going well. show more Then Gio comes back after "deserting" her for five years and he wants to start their relationship again. At first B is against it but after a couple weeks she is over it and ready to jump on the Gio Express again. Most of the book is B whining about how she loves Gio but, can't trust him. And Gio just can't live without B because she is his balance and he has never found that with a woman ever. Ugh! On and on and on and on. I love him - I don't trust him - but, I love and want to be with him forever. This drags on way too long. Too much tortured angst - she might as well be a moody teenager.

I knew this series was going nowhere for me once B began considering becoming a vampire so she can be with Gio forever. That was the beginning of the end for me. I just hate the notion that the weak human female has to become a vampire in order to be with the hunky, sexy vampire forever. Why? If she was so intriguing as a human that Mr. Vampire has to possess her then why does she have to turned into a vampire too? To me this is the classic - oh I love you but, I will love you so much more if you change this or that about yourself first. Dye your hair, lose some weight, get implants, become a vampire - all the same in my book. I had this same issue with Cat and Bones in the Night Huntress series.

So I got halfway through the book and decided I would stick it out because I had paid for the book and maybe I might be ok with the plot line. Maybe this time it would be different, maybe she won't become a vampire. but then I got to the point where B realizes that she can't be on extended vacation from her job forever and says, "Well, I guess I'll have to quit my job" and Gio smirks! Smirks!!!!! Flames shot out of my eyes at that point. Really?? She works for years to get where she is and gets her dream job but Gio is so smug about her giving all that up to be with him? GRRRRRRRR!!!! If this hadn't been an e-book on my Kindle Fire I would have thrown it across the room!

So, I'm done with this series which is a shame because it had potential for me. I like the new twists although some of the conventions kind of get old. Like all the vampires having "children" - it gets hard to tell who belongs to who and if they are genetically related "children" or "sired" children. Oh, and the one thing that seriously bugged me that the author uses over and over is the way B asks Gio questions.

"Gio?"

"What?"

This makes B sound like a five year old instead of the intelligent woman she is supposed to be. Just makes my skin crawl to see a strong character reduced to being a pet.

I know I am in the minority here as there are many five star reviews and as I said my disappointment with this book is probably my fault. I probably need to give up on the vampire genre because the convention seems to be that the human must always become a vampire so that hero and heroine can live together forever..... I wish just once that an author would have the guts to defy that logic and end it without the traditional vampires living together forever ending. show less

Elemental Mysteries turned into one of the best paranormal series I've read this year. It's sharp, elegant, clever, evenly paced without dragging its feet and at the same time emotionally intense.

I'm extremely grateful that book #2 was just as strong as book #1. Expect the unexpected. This book is a free fall with a twist. You really don't know where you're going to land in the end... *grinning* I certainly didn't, and now I can't wait for book #3 to continue reading about Gio and Beatrice's adventures.

There are just so many things I like! The way Gio comes back into Beatrice's life, how she is introduced to his world, the intrigues and carefully woven dialogues. How strong a woman she becomes in the years he's been away...

Excellent, show more believable characters, fascinating world full of mystery and a great story line.

Very highly recommended. show less

I am a bit sad where this all went especially because the author did so many things the proper way that usually are just lazily being thrown together.
We don't just get a time skip training montage to get the mc up to speed nor are there some magic I-am-now-good-at-this-because-fate things going on, no, we really see and experience the painful and hard work she has to endure to actually have a fighting chance.
I really liked that.
BUT the ludicrously stupid "time to grow up" was just so out of place I can't even put it into words.
And, yea, they talk about how stupid it was and she makes him fight for forgiveness for it later yadda, yadada but at the end of the day, this is just not believable. Just look at how much wisdom and life show more experience a bright old person typically collects and condenses and now think about how much better they understand human nature and all the stupidity of youth and now lets again look at our OLD vampire friend here. Anything strange? no? ...
Onto the next thing, the crying. How the hell I am supposed to believe that she has had time to toughen up throughout this hard time without him if she is constantly in tears.
I am not of the opinion that tears are a sign of weakness or anything but if the mc can literally not see most of the time it's just too much.
So, after our character now finally has somewhat reconciled with her love interest, has learned to stand her ground in a fight and stopped crying for a minute she gets kidnapped without ever even having a chance to even try out her badass new fighting skills. To be rescued by the ominous, dark, brooding vampire. TWICE. That's where I dropped this one.

The romance itself was cute. Not shying away from showing the time and effort that goes into actually learning a skill was cool. But the rest was just all over the place and I havened even mentioned the incredibly two-dimensional ideas of good and evil as well as the incredibly flat evil just for the sake of evil adversary.
Here now ends my journey much sooner than I had hoped. show less

Giovanni's and Beatrice's epic adventures continues in this second installment of the Elemental Mysteries series. It's five years later and Giovanni has come back to claim B as his, but she was so hurt by him and isn't having any of that. Giovanni believed he was doing what's right for B when he let her walk away five years ago, he thought she needed time to mature and grow into her own person. That was good of Giovanni to care about B enough to realize that her jumping into his world without thinking it through might cause regret. Nice Giovanni, your such a arrogant bastard fooling yourself and everyone that your were only doing this for B, (channeling Beatrice here)he was also protecting himself, he was worried that a hundred years show more later B would hate him for stealing her human life and it's rewards. He was worried that she only had a crush or maybe wouldn't want to take the ultimate step of becoming like him. I get it, he was afraid of getting hurt since he has never cared for anyone in five hundred years the way he cares for B. That's my feelings on that matter but I still loved him, no worries.

This sequel was so amazing that I don't think I can accurately convey the events that took place in this story. Let's just say that there was actually adventure and mystery in this epic story, Giovanni and B's journeys across the globe added some of the best parts to the story. It had an historical feel to it which in turn added that epicness I was getting. I liked seeing Giovanni's and B's feelings for each other grow into to something with substance and grit which made it very believable. There was a lot of new interesting characters with their own agenda. In real life, hate politics with a passion but the vampire politics was interesting to see. Excited about the addition of Benjamin to Giovanni's new family, hope to see more of him in the series. There is so much to experience in This Same Earth, it was definitely filled with anticipation and danger. Great storytelling and an exciting thrill ride. I digress. show less

I enjoyed reading A Hidden Fire so much that I promptly bought and read the next book in the series. Giovanni and Beatrice's story continues in This Same Earth, book two in the Elemental Mysteries series by Elizabeth Hunter. Beatrice has been abducted by Lorenzo and was held captive for several weeks before being freed by Giovanni, Caspar and Tenzin. Although she wasn't tortured or hurt physically, the emotional torture has left its mark, primarily because she thought that Giovanni had willingly traded her for a book.

It takes awhile for Giovanni to convince Beatrice that this was not the case, but he gradually gets her to see that Lorenzo was going to abduct her no matter what so he simply played along with him. To give Beatrice time to show more heal from the emotional trauma of her abduction, not to mention witnessing the horrific fight between the two different vampire factions, Giovanni takes to the mountains of Chile. Beatrice and Giovanni are given the opportunity to show their feelings for one another and their relationship becomes much closer, or so Beatrice thinks. Regrettably their lives cannot be put on hold forever and Beatrice must return to the States to attend graduate school. So off they go, Beatrice to LA for school and Giovanni to try and track down her father, his errant son and to amass allies in the ongoing battle with his son.

Beatrice spends an enjoyable few years in graduate school and makes friends. She returns to Chile each summer but her time there is spent without benefit of Giovanni's company. She knows that she loves him and tells him so in a series of journals. Each year she says she's not going to return to Chile but her ticket is mysteriously left at her home and she returns. Fortunately she is afforded the opportunity to read through some of Giovanni's journals and learns a bit more of his past lives.

Fast forward a few more years and Beatrice is twenty-eight years old. She is an accomplished young woman, fluent in several languages, a homeowner, an employee at the Huntington Library in California, and in a relationship with a loving man, Mano. It has been six years since she saw Giovanni and she's trying to move on with her life, or so she thought until Giovanni mysteriously reappears. Giovanni is now the legal guardian and "uncle" to a precocious, street-smart twelve-year-old named Ben.

Beatrice must deal with renewing her relationship with Giovanni and building a relationship with Ben, her eventual breakup with Mano, and an introduction to her great-great-great-grandfather (I think I left out a few more greats but you get the idea), who just happens to be a water vampire that oversees LA. What follows is a series of fast-paced incidents including the abduction of one of Carwyn's sons. Beatrice and Giovanni wind up going to Ireland, England and France trying to track down leads on the whereabouts of Lorenzo and Beatrice's father, Stephen. Through it all Beatrice must confront her feelings for Giovanni and ultimately decide if she wants to have a relationship with him as a human or be turned.

This Same Earth is another fast-paced paranormal, romantic suspense read. There's slightly more action and intrigue in this story and more background information is given providing insight into Giovanni, Carwyn, Tenzin and even Lorenzo. The story ends leaving the reader hanging and waiting for more. Regrettably the third book in this series, The Force of Wind isn't due out until February/March 2012, but I'll definitely be putting it on my TBR list (wish we could pre-order ebooks 3-4 months in advance). show less