Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini

I picked this up because of the promise of some Greek mythology and a Shakespearean romance of sorts. I’d say I was pretty pleased with the result. As far as the mythology goes, from what I know of the popular Greek myth that Starcrossed is based on, it seems like Angelini certainly took some liberties and changed some things along the way…which could have possibly have been intentional to make the story fresh but provide strong elements for a base of the story. As far as the love story goes, boy was it confusing and crazy at times! It was a refreshing love story as it doesn’t start out with insta-love, but quite the opposite, and doesn’t include any love triangles in this first book. I felt like the insta-hate was actually well done. It was just all like, “I hate you and want to kill you” and then two seconds later “Ok I totes just realized my hatred is LOOOVE.” I felt like it progressed naturally and there were actually reasons behind the change in heart.With that kind of intense hatred, it was pretty entertaining to watch their story unfold. Also, there are some major happenings that try to screw up their romance and one was WOWSER. I was thinking, “Welp, yep. If I found that out too it’d be quite the buzzkill for sexytimes with my hot new boyfriend.”

I didn’t particularly LOVE Helen that much. She’s one of those characters who I just didn’t connect with and often thought many of her actions and reasons for acting were eyeroll inducing. There were times when I warmed up to her and then certain times during the end where I wanted to shake the hell out of her! I think as far as characters go, her best friend Clare and Lucas’s family made the book for me! They were an interesting group of characters but I have to say I felt some déjà vu as they really reminded me of a certain famous paranormal family that some love and hate – the Cullens. Seriously, I read this as an egalley and couldn’t wait to see if others found it eerily similar to Twilight’s own Cullen family and sure enough I wasn’t the only one!

Speaking of Twilight similarities, I did find there to be some hints of parallels between the storylines but overall I found this to have way more depth and exploration into Greek mythology than Twilight did as far as focusing way more on the romance rather than really building any sort of world for me or strong foundation for the vampires. Starcrossed did an excellent job balancing the romance with the interesting foundation for the story in terms of the Greek mythology. I found this to be as addicting and engrossing of a read as I found Twilight. That “can’t put down” feeling was there and I read way more quickly through this beast of a book than I thought I would have. I also found Starcrossed to be infinitely better on the writing front.

Let’s talk about one thing though. I hate when I feel like the author writes something in a way that makes me feel like he/she thinks I’m too dumb to figure something out (and I totally don’t think this was Angelini’s intention to make me feel like this). There was this BIG key to the book that had to do with something that Helen possessed and I felt like it kept being put out there a bajillion times to foreshadow the big reveal. There were random passages were a character would mention said thing and after the second time it was just a glaring neon light like “HEY LOOK THIS IS IMPORTANT. DO YOU SEE HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS? ” I think the discreet mention of THE THING would have been great had it not been repeatedly pointed out so I’d know that it was important. I could have figured it out for myself or at least when the lightbulbs came on for Helen and company..I would have been like OH YEAH.

In the end, I really did enjoy this book. I didn’t find it to be a perfect 5 star book but I certainly enjoyed the thrill as this book unfolded…even with the craziness of the last 100 pages or so. I can see why people say that fans of Twilight would like this book and I would probably recommend this to my Twilight loving sister for the fact that it is addicting, a worthy epic love story and I enjoyed the building of the world. I will most certainly be reading the next book in this series although I’m going to need someone to read it right before that and refresh my memory a bit as there was A LOT of things that happened and so many different things to remember about characters or the mythology.

Have you read this one? What did you think? Any other Greek mythology based books that I should pick up?