Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini

Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini
Series: Starcrossed #1
Published by: HarperTeen on May 31, 2011
Genre: Fantasy, Mythology, Romance
Pages: 487
Source: Purchased
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Rating: ★★★

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?

I think I went into this book with my hopes too high. I love Greek mythology and stories of starcrossed lovers, so I thought that Starcrossed would be perfect for me! I did enjoy the book, I just didn’t love it as much as I thought I would.

Helen lives her life trying to get by under the radar. She lives with her single dad on the small island of Nantucket. From the beginning of the story, we get hints that Heleny isn’t quite.. normal. She seems to have super human strength and speed, but tries her best to hide it so that she still appears normal. She also has major issues with attention, which is where my first gripe comes from.

Helen hates the spotlight. She avoids any kind of attention at all costs. When the spotlight is cast on her, she feels physically sick. Helen is also very self-degrading, always going on about how she’s not pretty, she’s a huge nerd, she has a horrible reputation in school, complaining about people hate her, etc. This really, really bothered me. Towards the end of the book we do learn that the whole “feeling sick when she gets attention” thing isn’t really her fault, but it still bugged me a lot. During most of the story, Helen felt like such a weak character. I couldn’t like her when she was constantly complaining, feeling sorry for herself, and generally acting childish. One of the other characters, Hector, actually told Helen that she needed to grow up. I definitely agree with that statement!

So, moving a head a bit, Helen meets a new boy at school named Lucas. For some reason, she has an uncontrollable desire to kill him. She’s filled with so much rage and hatred towards him but has no idea why. We later learn that this is because of The Furies. The Furies basically turn the different ‘Houses’ (based on lineage) against each other. But Helen and Lucas fight against this, believing that they’re actually destined to be together. And so, they fall in love. Cue issue #2.

I kind of feel like there was no “falling in love” phase for Helen and Lucas. One minute they hate each other’s guts, then Lucas saves Helen’s life and suddenly they’re holding hands and stuff. But then here’s the even more annoying part: Lucas is always holding Helen’s hand and making remarks that suggest he likes her, but then he tells Helen that they can’t be together. But even after he says that, he continues to hold her hand every chance he gets. Talk about leading a woman on! I thought that was just so annoying… I would be so pissed if a guy did that to me in real life. If he thinks they can’t be together, he shouldn’t be treating her like he wants to date her!

The last character I’ll talk about is Claire. Claire is Helen’s best friend. As Helen is figuring out that she’s actually a demigod, etc., she doesn’t tell Claire about any of it. Eventually Helen tells her and Claire is basically like “I knew that already.” How did she know? She found out she could fly by pushing her off a roof when they were kids (just to find out if she could fly). She also tried stabbing her once just to see if it would hurt her. At first I liked Claire’s character but after that, I just thought it was a bit weird. I thought it was too convenient that Claire did all those things (which is psycho in itself) and then actually put the pieces together. I mean if I pushed my friend off a roof and saw her “float gracefully to the ground,” I’d think I was going crazy. I wouldn’t automatically think, “Okay, she can fly.” The whole thing just seemed too ‘easy’ to me.

Overall, I did enjoy the Greek mythology aspects of this story and the whole blood feud, but I think I overhyped it for myself. I went into it desperately wanting to love the story, but there were too many let downs for it to be a 4 or 5 star book. I probably will read Dreamless eventually, but I’m not in a huge hurry.

The Verdict