Starcrossed

Title: Starcrossed
Author: Josephine Angelini
Year: 2011
Series?: Starcrossed #1
Format: Hardcover (Library checkout)
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy/Mythology, Romance

What's it about?: Helen Hamilton has lived on the boring island of Nantucket for her entire life. Helen does everything she can to avoid being the center of attention, despite being model thin and tall, extremely smart and incredible at athletics. Helen knows down deep she is not a normal human, she has dreams of old women crying blood and wandering a desert landscape, waking up to dirty feet in her bed. When the Delos family moves to the island and begins to stir up gossip, Helen is the only person not intrigued by their presence, in fact it makes her cranky. Until the day she meets Lucas Delos, in which she flies into a white hot fury that is beyond her control.

My opinion: This book exceeded my expectations. I checked out this book because Goodreads had recommended it and I'm glad I took the chance. The story sucks you in from the first page and I ended up devouring this book within 24 hours. I liked the fact that this wasn't another Vampire/Werewolf/Angel young adult novel, as much as I like those. Angelini incorporated ancient Greek mythology into a modern setting very well, even if I wasn't familiar with The Iliad, she explained the background without being confusing or exhausting. Starcrossed was paced very well and there was never a choppy moment in the flow, it captures your attention and keeps a choke-hold on it until the very last page. The were times when it got a little Mortal Instruments for me (in a very small way) but despite that small plot similarity, it was quite the original idea, having demigods live among mortals.

Lucas is one of those great book boyfriends we always fall for, even when he "hated" Helen, he still protected her from danger, as if he recognized that they were connected in some way. I liked the development of their relationship, the fine line between friendship and something more. I also understood why Lucas waited so long to tell her his reasons for not "being" with Helen, which I won't go into. But I am always a big supporter of relationship angst within a book, so I look forward to the rest of the saga and how far they will go with it. Spoiler!: once the Furies were sent away from Helen and the Delos family, I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the new friends Helen made within it. Aside from Lucas, Hector was my favorite as he seemed to be the most misunderstood of them all, he seemed to bear most of the burden and while his family wasn't mean to him, they didn't seem to give him enough credit; they worried about him too much.

One criticism! I wish that they would have said Helen was a blond at the beginning of the book, maybe they did and I missed it, but I spent like 93% of the book picturing her as a brunette so I was irked when I realized I had been picturing her wrong. Oh well, just a nitpicky thang I guess.

I would rate this book 4 out of 5 stars!