Review: Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini

NO STARS!

Quick! Someone get me chocolate! Lots and lots of chocolate!

I should have known that when Lauren kate blurbed this book I wouldn’t like it. No, wait, that doesn’t fully express my hatred for Starcrossed. How about this:

After reading this shit storm of a book I feel like I should go straight to my book shelf and give “Catastrophe”: Hush, Hush,  “My Eyes, They Bleed!”: House of Night, “Kill it with Fire!”: Twilight, and even, yes,  “Are You Fuckin’ Kidding Me?!”: Carrier of the Mark all 5 glorious stars.

This is the worst book I have ever read.

Why, oh, why did I read it? I should have listened to the Fates (Kat, Paige, Phoebe). They warned me of this, but I didn’t listen. I almost ALWAYS agree with them on books. Why did I think this would be a different story? I will never doubt your wisdom again, ladies.

This one time I let myself be influenced by another popular reviewer who claimed to absolutely love this book. I was conned! Fooled! Bamboozled! Hoodwinked!

The only logical answer is that Hades himself was behind the plot to fry my remaining brain cells. Yes, that must be it. I’ve been trolled by the Lord of the Underworld himself.

HADES!!

ARE YOU HAPPY?!

ARE YOU FUCKING HAPPY NOW?!

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY FOR YOURSELF?!

Y-y-you heartless bastard.

Where do I even start? There’s just so many things I want to touch on I feel overwhelmed.

*flips through her notebook*

Good thing I took plenty of notes then. Hahahaha!

The Writing

Dear, Gandhi! It was terrible! Immediately when I started to read, I felt my eye balls start rebuking me. “Noooooooooo, don’t make us! You are evil! You are heartless! Why do you hate us! We’ve been good to you!” I’m not exaggerating when I say this was amateur at best and eye-bleeding bad at worse. The book is littered with ridiculously  simple sentences that remind me of a children’s book. “See Helen Spot run? Helen Spot can run fast! Run, Helen Spot. Run!” Metaphors and similes exsit for a reason. Let’s use them. But that’s not event the worst of it. There were countless pages of info-dumping as well. SHOW DON’T TELL! And the dialogue…OMFG. It was painfully obvious that they were trying entirely too hard to sound like “hip” teens.

“What the holy hand grenade was that?”

It felt goofy as hell.

“Unbefrickinglievable,” Hector cusses quietly into the silence.

I just wanted to shake them. Shake them all.

The Plot

The plot was a damn mess. Basic run down:

Lucas and his Brady Bunch family move to the neighborhood.

Helen and Lucas almost kill each other.

They break curse/spell/whatever and fall in love over night.

Oh noz! Helen is in danger.

Helen suddenly becomes a sex kitten.

Lucas denies her advances.

Helen wonders if he is gay. Contemplates sex change.

“…she decided that if Lucas was gay then she was going to have to get a sex change operation. He would be so worth it.”

Demi-god training.

Oh, but wait! Now, she is invincible!

“Sex, please,” says Helen. “No means no, Helen. It would destroy the world!” Lucas cries.

Shit happens, people die.

“OMG! So we won’t destroy the world after all! I’m horny. Let’s do it,” Lucas declares. *rams tongue down throat* “Ew. We are first cousins! We can never be together! Fuck our fuckin’ life!” she whines.

Fin.

Keep up Hades! 

Angelini tries to confuse the readers with her many plot twists, but all the plot really does is run around the mulberry bush chasing the weasel. There was nothing clever about it. I could tell that I was supposed to be like, “Whoa! My teeny little brain never saw that coming!” IT NEVER HAPPENED! 

Helen

Let’s play Name That Sue! But first you’re going to need a few clues about her personality:

– I’m super beautiful, but I don’t notice it!

– I’m the “last” person in my family. Woe is me!

– I’m so powerful and useless, love me!

– I’m so selfless. Here, let me love you!

– My characterization has been used over and over in tons of books, but I have super speshul powers!  I’m kewler than them!

Answers: Black Hole Sue, God Mode Sue, Sympathetic Sue, Anti-Sue… my god. It’s too many Sues to count! It’s a Thirty Sue Pileup!

Helen is an idiot.

Most of the novel she’s running around with twinkling stars in her eyes and clueless to everything that is happening around her. She is beautiful in every way. So much so, that it is normal for people to just sit and stare at her. Everybody loves her and the world kisses her ass every chance it gets. Her favorite hobbies include going grocery shopping, cooking for her dad, doing homework, and personal hygiene. Oh hey, Bella! I didn’t see you there!

The moment Helen and Lucas stop attempting to end each other’s life, they immediately start holding hands and declaring their love for one another. (Oh, insta-love! How I hate thee!) She’s never had a boyfriend or been kissed until Lucas and his family move into town. There is just something about Lucas that brings out everything in Helen. And I do mean everything. Her entire life she has had all these powerful mystical powers, but she never knew about them because whenever she would use them unknowingly in front of mortals she would get a nasty bout of menstrual cramps! Little does Helen know that her cramps were a cursed placed on her by her very own mother. But it was totally for her protection. Of course. *eyeroll* If that isn’t some bullshit, I don’t know what is.

So anyway, with every new plot twist, Helen seems to get a new power. Which basically means she keeps getting more and more useless. All she does is say, “Oh, but I don’t want to hurt anyone! Even if they are trying to kill me, I can’t justify their deaths!” Are you kidding me? She has no sense of self-preservation.

“I knew if I started blocking him he’d just get angrier, and then I would eventually have no choice by to hit him so hard he wouldn’t be able to hit me back.”

She.is.a.demi-god.
Go on and let it out, Hades!

That was during a SELF-DEFENSE session. How is it that a character can be so powerful and do NOTHING with her powers? What is the point?!*breath in, breath out* Sorry, guys. The stupidity makes it hard to breath. Thankfully, one of the other characters noticed this madness and said:

“She’d better get it in her. Because I don’t want any of the people I love to die defending her lazy ass.”

That was the only good part of the entire book. >_>

Then I hit the next chapter and Cassandra has a sword aimed for Helen’s head and she JUST STANDS THERE.

Cassandra swung her sword. In that millisecond Helen knew she’d had a good life, because she suddenly loved it so much that she could have wept with gratitude. She’d had amazing friends, the best dad in the world, and a strong, healthy body…

I thought she was going to finally die! I was like, “Yes! KILL HER NOW! Doooo iiiittttt!” And you know what happens? She levels up out of nowhere!

Why won’t she roll over and die already?!

So now she’s invincible and can’t be killed by any weapons AND she’s the most powerful demi-god. REALLY?! >Implied Facepalm<

Yet, believe it or not all those things I could have semi-forgiven and gave this book 1 star, maybe 2 for good effort. The biggest problem with this book: It’s SEXIST. This book offended me on so many levels, it’s not even funny. Let me count the ways:

Causal jokes about domestic abuse:

“I’ll just tell him you abuse me,” she said with a shrug. “And I’ll tell him you like it,” he teased back.

That shit is not amusing. AT ALL. Lots of women suffer from domestic abuse every day and Angelini pokes fun?! What messages are we sending our young girls? That this is romantic banter? This is why young girls think it is okay to tweet crazy shit like they would let Chris Brown hit them any time. This is why we are seeing people happy about him singing songs with Rihanna. We need to speak up against this. IT IS NOT OKAY!  OMG, I’m so angry right now, I’m seeing red. RAGE.

Use your powers in the kitchen!:

Everything about Ariadne was so feminine and round and lovely that Helen simply couldn’t imagine anyone hitting her. “Do you guys do this to each other often? The fighting, I mean.” Ariadne was shaking her head before Helen had even finished talking. “No. We spar together to stay in shape, but only the boys really fight, and only when they need to get something off their chests.”

WHAT?!  The only reason why they fight is to stay in shape? THEY ARE DEMI-GODS!!!!!

Controlling boyfriend:

“Now go to sleep,” he ordered.

Come again? He what?! Oh, hell no. Let a guy come home and start ordering me around. I’ve got two words for him:

Bitch, please.

He kissed her neck and said he was sorry over and over, but try as she might, he wouldn’t let her face him. She began to feel like she was being used.

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG.

“Is Zach after you?” Lucas asked with wide eyes.
“Oh, not really. He wants to talk to me about something, I think,” Helen said as if it wasn’t important. She shut her mouth before she could say too much.
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Lucas said with a sneer, his blue eyes turning nearly black as he sensed her untruth. Is there any reason for Zach to think that you might be single?”

At this point he never even asked her to be his girl friend! He goes throughout most of the book just holding her hand, but telling everyone else they don’t really have a relationship. And then he pulls this line:

“Are you trying to make me jealous or are you just so frustrated that you’re already looking for someone else? Someone who would give in to you?”

I just… can’t.

Women should be held to high standards and oh, yeah, they’re evil:

“A lady never cheapened herself by using foul language.”

And:

“He had sworn to remove the feminine evil of the cestus from the world so that all men could control their lust.

Yup, thats right. It’s totally a woman’s fault a man can’t control himself. I can’t believe women have been fighting for RIGHTS just so we can write about this kind of stuff! Around 80% this book gets super ridiculous with making Helen and her mother out to be “semxy sex pots”. Helen is so damn useless powerful and horny that she pretty much starts playing Lady GaGa’s Love Game, trying to take off Lucas‘ at every opportunity she gets.

Let’s have some fun this beat is sick. I wanna take a ride on your disco stick!

I suppose this is what she is supposed to look like:

I can see you staring there from across the block with a smile on your mouth and a hand on your HUH!

There are a ton of other problems with this book, but I’ve wasted enough of my life with Starcrossed. I probably have enough anger and quotes to write a damn book myself. I just… can’t. I’m offended this was written. I offended that it was published. I offended people think this is okay.

This book FAILED at failing.