Review: Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini

Set on the island of Nantucket, STARCROSSED tells the tale of Helen Hamilton, a young woman whose destiny is forever altered when she meets Lucas Delos and tries to kill him in front of her entire high school. Which is terribly inconvenient, not only because Lucas is the most beautiful boy on the island, but also because Helen is so achingly shy she suffers physical pain whenever she is given too much attention.

Making matters worse, Helen is beginning to suspect she’s going crazy. Whenever she’s near Lucas or any member of his family she sees the ghostly apparitions of three women weeping bloody tears, and suffers the burden of an intense and irrational hate. She soon learns that she and Lucas are destined to play the leading roles in a Greek tragedy that the Three Fates insist on repeating over and over again throughout history. Like her namesake, Helen of Troy, she’s destined to start a war by falling in love. But even though Lucas and Helen can see their own star-crossed destiny, they’re still powerfully attracted to each other. Will they give up their personal happiness for the greater good, or risk it all to be together?

Review:

There is so much good and so much bad about this book, that it's almost starcrossed itself. You know how you love this person, but you can't cause it's bad?

Essentially, I enjoyed Starcrossed. I found that the beginning was really interesting and I found myself turning the pages as I kept going. Then, something happened.

I completely blame the romance here. I liked Lucas. Adore him even. But there seems to be this growing trend that when you love someone, you do everything they suggest. Even if you were disagreeing with it not two paragraphs before and there was no logical explanation for it. That was the problem with Helen. If Lucas said she should do something or learn something, that was it. Her love was that strong for Lucas that she listened to everything he said.

I don't believe it. I can't bring myself to believe that that is what love is. To me, that's what Starcrossed showed love as. And I regret it.

The only other problem I had was that the last few chapters left me so frigging confused I had no idea what was going on. It was like they were all speaking English, but a Elizabethan English or something here. I know my basics of Greek Mythology (enough to guess who was the descendant of whom), but there was no real explanation in those last few chapters. It was as if Angelini expected this to be common knowledge--and it so wasn't.

However, I did kind of enjoy myself. The romance and the confusion were all that I didn't like. If this book wasn't so heavily involved in the romance, it'd probably get four stars. An enjoyable, confusing and slightly frustrating read for me.

Review: 3 stars
Date Published: May 31st 2011
Publisher: HarperTEEN
Source: Bought
Format: ebook
Date Read: June 2012
Page Count: 487
Series/Stand Alone: Starcrossed #1