Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini

Helen has grown up on Nantucket surrounded by the same old people and the water.  When a mysterious new family moves onto the island, she begins to understand all the things that have made her different her whole life and learns who she really is.

Meeting his eyes was an awakening.  For the first time in Helen's life she knew what pure heart-poising hatred was. --e-ARC

I badly want to paint this book with the Twilight brush.  I mean, Starcrossed involves a good girl feeling a pull to a boy to a mysterious new boy, a large family that moves into the area and keeps to themselves, the inability for anyone to answer a simple question, a girl who is better at being superhuman than the boy, and a large evil family bent on the destruction and/or assimilation of the smaller good family.  And all of that sounds really familiar. And I tried to fight the ongoing comparisons in my head as I was read, but it was all there.  It was still a really good book and a compelling book with plenty to offer on its own.

*slight SPOILERS*

This time we are involving not vampires, but Greek gods and the Trojan War.  It seems that the Fates want the descendants of the participants in that war to repeat the cycle.  And Helen and one of the Delos boys, Lucas, are drawn to each other.  At first out of instant violent hate and then later as something else, dooming them to repeat the cycle as well. I liked both Helen and Lucas and I thought their role together was very sweet and I really wanted them to get together.  I couldn't figure out how that was going to work since they wanted to kill each other at first.  But work out it did.  Although so many things stood/stand in their way, I don't know how the whole thing is going to get resolved.  Helen's best friend, Claire, is made of awesome sauce.  Seriously she is truly one great friend and I was glad to see her stick with her friend through the whole book.

There are a lot of subplots going on: Helen figuring out who she is, the Delos family, women attacking Helen, her missing mother, the romance, dealing with the Furies, and Helen's superpowers to start.  It is mostly wrapped up so I'm hoping the next book has a tighter plot.  The action is fast past and it moves right along.  I was glad of that because at nearly 500 pages, this book could have been a monster to read.  As it was I could barely put it down.  The writing is pretty straightforward and a little less telling and more showing might be a good idea.  It's written in the third person so the reader gets a bigger picture of the action and little more of other characters besides Helen.  

SPOILERS (highlight)  ** Okay, here is this thing.  Helen's mom tells her that she is Lucas' first cousin and so they cannot be together, right?  But Ajax dies 19 years ago and Helen just turned 17.  Simple math says that he cannot be her father.  Yet no one does the math in their head.  They are all just distraught and melodramatic about the whole thing.  Simple math would saved them a lot of trouble.**


Provided by NetGalley
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