Ivory and Bone by Julie Eshbaugh

Summary: Hunting, gathering, and keeping his family safe—that’s the life seventeen-year-old Kol knows. Then bold, enigmatic Mya arrives from the south with her family, and Kol is captivated. He wants her to like and trust him, but any hopes of impressing her are ruined when he makes a careless—and nearly grave—mistake. However, there’s something more to Mya’s cool disdain…a history wrought with loss that comes to light when another clan arrives. With them is Lo, an enemy from Mya’s past who Mya swears has ulterior motives.
As Kol gets to know Lo, tensions between Mya and Lo escalate until violence erupts. Faced with shattering losses, Kol is forced to question every person he’s trusted. One thing is for sure: this was a war that Mya or Lo—Kol doesn’t know which—had been planning all along.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I went into this book, but I know I wasn’t expecting to be immediately transported back to prehistoric times, rooting for a surprisingly sensitive and 100% endearing teenage boy. Kol’s sense of duty to his clan was apparent, but also apparent was the love that tied him to every member of his family. Mya was an enigma, and like Kol, I was intrigued and sometimes annoyed with her. What struck me most about this book was how tautly Eshbaugh wove the inter-clan relationships – even though each of the three clans in the story only had a few dozen people, the full scale of human relationships, politics, and the horrors of warfare played out in the story. I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator, Michael Curran-Dorsano, was a perfect match for Kol’s thoughtful, solid personality. This book is perfect for anyone who really is looking to read something new and different.

IVORY AND BONE is out now.

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