Book Review: Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini

Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini

(3.5 Stars)

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?

Cover Opinion: It's not really the most prettiest cover I've ever seen, it's not awful, but it didn't really strike me interesting, but it does have an interesting title.

Book Review: It was my first time reading one of Josephine Angelini's work, and the plot of the book was pretty interesting. It was about Helen, a really tall and pretty girl. Recently their island had a new neighbor. Everybody was curious about them, they were pretty much movie stars with their being gorgeous. Helen wasn’t really fond of them (that’s putting it lightly). When she first saw Lucas (one of the de los family’s hottest sons), she was completely enraged, without any reason at all (this was actually her first time to see him personally), but she felt like she knew him. From her past, that she can’t even remember.

She then continues to feel this anger towards him and his family. She made it her way to completely ignore them, but the rage and hatred grew stronger. Ironically, she kept running into them, and each time that happens, Lucas continues to push her away. This irritated Helen to no end. But the unexpected happened, one night instead of killing Lucas, and vice versa, they ended up saving each other, and this gave way for learning Helen’s untold past and heritage.

I had fun reading this book, I knew from the start that this was inspired by Greek mythology, and it still felt original. The fates were the ones that are knit close to the plot. The gods of Olympus isn’t in the spotlight for once. It was interesting to know the history of Helen of troy, I hadn’t had the chance to delve into it, until now.

Was it amazing? A little bit.

It had a nice story to it, I liked the fact that the fates were the ones that were controlling them, the way the story continued was because of the fates' curse on the "house". But there is something so stereotypical in the story, of course it revolved about epic love. Helen and Lucas weren't supposed to fall in love with each other. Just like Helen and Paris. If they fall in love and became "married" (Greek style), the curse will only get worse. I'm not that surprised that they (meaning Helen and Lucas) chose to run away and be together, but I had to admit it was so sweet, but whenever there's true love, something was bound to stop their love for each other.

I don't like hate this, but this is already to easy to expect, the girl chose to be a martyr to keep the others safe, and the boy agreed. I can't explain what I exactly feel about this kind of coincedence, It wasn't a kind of book that I would consider on my "favorite" shelf, but it isn't that bad for me to put it in the trash, I just hope the sequel will make up for this.