Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini

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Description-

How do you defy destiny?
Helen Hamilton has spent her entire sixteen years trying to hide how different she is—no easy task on an island as small and sheltered as Nantucket. And it's getting harder. Nightmares of a desperate desert journey have Helen waking parched, only to find her sheets damaged by dirt and dust. At school she's haunted by hallucinations of three women weeping tears of blood . . . and when Helen first crosses paths with Lucas Delos, she has no way of knowing they're destined to play the leading roles in a tragedy the Fates insist on repeating throughout history.
As Helen unlocks the secrets of her ancestry, she realizes that some myths are more than just legend. But even demigod powers might not be enough to defy the forces that are both drawing her and Lucas together—and trying to tear them apart.





The ingenuity of creating these kinds of story strike me as amazing. I have always had a passion for history and mythology. That was what had attracted me to this story in the first place. It's not too often that you read about Greek gods being your mom, dad, uncle, third cousin twice removed blah blah blah. The worst part about it is how careful authors have to be when it comes to writing stories with a mythological aspect. They can seriously screw it up with one little mistake (ex. Aphrodite, goddess of war? Not). Now I am going to point out 2 things that bother me about this book.
  1. How fast Helen and Lucas fell in love.
One minute, she is ready to gauge his eyes out and beat the crap out of him. The next its like " I just can't stop thinking about him". I had made a promise to myself that I would not compare any books to Twilight, but this one was just cutting it pretty close. If Twilight and Percy Jackson had a baby, this would be the outcome. Between the fast and attraction-less romance to the mythology, everything was scrambled up. 
Which brings me to the second thing that had bothered me. 

    2. The actual writing gave me a partial headache. 

As readers, we have trained ourselves to analyze books as a sixth sense. When you read a book where there is a lack of dialogue and most of what you see is random thoughts "trying" to build up towards some important moment, it makes you very restless. There really was no flow of words. I personally believe that a story should flow together and not be choppy.

The over all plot is absolutely genius. 
Now if it would have been  written a little better, I probably would have loved it. 
Great read if you are int0 Mythology and choppy writing




2 stars



9 Opinions:

Michelle @ Much Loved Books said...

New follower from BB :D

http://muchlovedbooks.blogspot.com/ follow me when you get the chance please :D

Unknown said...

Hey Athina! I'm a new follower here from Book Blogs! Just so you know, the message you sent out had a typo in your URL and wouldn't take me to your blog, so you might want to send out a new one. You had "spunkyreview" instead of "spunkyreviews" (btw LOVE the name!)

If you get a chance, check out my blog, for the love of books. I'm a new blogger too :)

As a tip, the best thing you can do is to do any blog hops or follow fridays you can. Every friday, parajunkee (a fellow blogger) does a thing called Follow Friday where you sign up and go to as many other blogs to follow as you can and leave a comment. Then they come back and follow your blog too! It's a win-win. Definitely check it out and your follower count will SKYROCKET (okay, you'll get 50 more or so but still!)

Best of luck! You ever want to talk, I'm on twitter (@greisn1) :)

Unknown said...

Sooo apparently my followo didn't go through. Just checked. But it is now :)

Let's Evaluate said...

new follower! [:

Great review! I've been thinking about picking this up, so it is great to see another opinion of it! [Love your background btw--so cute!]

new blogger, stop by if you get a chance: http://letsevaluate.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

Love the honesty of your review. I keep picking this book up and putting it down. I read Meg Cabot's Avalon High, which played around with the legends of King Arthur and I was afraid this book would sort of be like that but with Greek Myths. I'm a new follower now because I loved this review so much.

You can check out my blog http://www.mymercurialmusings.com if you like or find me on twitter @MyMercurialMuse

Happy Reading!

Athina said...

Thanks everyone! I am following all of you and thanks for following me!

Shannon (Giraffe Days) said...

So happy to read a "real" review of this book finally! I love the line, "If Twilight and Percy Jackson had a baby, this would be the outcome." Haven't read Percy yet but it was such a fun image in my head! I've become very jaded about YA fiction the last couple of years, and the choppy writing you described is just one issue I keep coming across.

Thanks Athina!
(we're friends on Goodreads btw, but haven't really connected on blogs yet I think?)

Shannon
Giraffe Days

Athina said...

Yeah, I love reading your reviews too (I only have one friend on goodreads named Shannon lol). I'm glad you liked it. Nowadays, being a writer means nothing like it used to be. They might as well start publishing books by monkeys.

I never knew you had a blog, so I'm gonna follow you!

Unknown said...

This is on my to be read list. It has a bunch of mixed reviews...kind of like the goddess test. Found you through book blogs...Nice blog! I followed! Please stop by mine if you get a chance. Its closeencounterswiththenightkind.blogspot.com
thanks,
Nikki

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