Monday, August 13, 2012

Review of Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout

by: Sarah
Release Date: May 8th, 2012
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Pages: 335 pages 
Series: 1 of 5
My Format: ebook
Rating:  / 1.5 out of 5

Starting over sucks.

When we moved to West Virginia right before my senior year, I'd pretty much resigned myself to thick accents, dodgy internet access, and a whole lot of boring.... until I spotted my hot neighbor, with his looming height and eerie green eyes. Things were looking up.

And then he opened his mouth.

Daemon is infuriating. Arrogant. Stab-worthy. We do not get along. At all. But when a stranger attacks me and Daemon literally freezes time with a wave of his hand, well, something...unexpected happens. 

The hot alien living next door marks me.

You heard me. Alien. Turns out Daemon and his sister have a galaxy of enemies wanting to steal their abilities, and Daemon's touch has me lit up like the Vegas Strip. The only way I'm getting out of this alive is by sticking close to Daemon until my alien mojo fades. 

If I don't kill him first, that is.


--

I know I'm going to offend so many people with this review, and I'm sorry in advance, but I'm gonna have to lay it all out there anyway.

I laughed pretty much throughout the entirety of this book. And not in a haha this is a well-written funny book kind of way, but more in a I actually can't believe this is real kind of way. So in that sense, I enjoyed it. I thought it was hilarious. But that's probably kind of bad, because I don't think it's supposed to be. 

I'm all for the hot asshole romantic male lead. ALL FOR IT. But in this book it doesn't actually ever make any sense. Usually when the male lead in a romance is standoffish and rude toward the heroine, it's because of some unseen danger he is ultimately protecting her from. But let's just say, realistically, if this were to be the case, I feel like any (para)normal guy would simply make his case known and leave the heroine alone or more likely, for the sake of keeping the story interesting, keep her at an awkward arm's length until they are passionately thrown together by circumstance and raging hormones. 

That...kind of happened in this book. Only mix in a whole lot of filler characters and sub plots that lead nowhere and big shiny ice-cream tubs (literally) of hokey plot devices. Most noticeably, Katy's mother and her disappearing act. It was a little silly to me that she was included as a character, when her only job was to breeze into scenes and say something like "Oh, honey." and then go to sleep or work or something. And Daemon's attitude toward Katy was just ridiculous, let's be real. He constantly goes out of his way to be extremely mean to her. And not even your typical hot asshole in a YA romance mean, but like actually just really nasty. I get that he was "supposed to be that way" because, he's like, protecting her and in denial that he has the hots for her, in general. Yeah, I got it. But it was still portrayed in a cringe-worthy fashion. Every time I read the word "kitten" I threw up in my mouth a little bit. And Katy, well, she was alright. She was no Bella, that's for sure. But she wasn't really the best heroine ever, either. Outside of her interactions with Daemon she was fine, but otherwise I was side-eyeing her the entire time. The writing in this book was all over the place. It was very dialogue heavy, which I don't mind at all, but the dialogue was quite repetitive and I couldn't understand why most of it hadn't been scrapped in the editing process. The big inevitable make-out scene was nice. Who doesn't enjoy a good make-out scene? But unfortunately it was not enough to redeem the rest of the book for me.

 The good news? It seems as though I'm in the vast minority when it comes to this book. 


yikes
Its fanbase is growing by the day and I'm sure as the series continues it will only become bigger. Just please don't band together to throw things at me. That's my only request.  I do have plans to read the sequel at some point, I'm not even going to lie, this series has major guilty pleasure potential for me. IF the writing improves at least a little bit and Daemon stops being an exaggerated cliche and stars acting like a normal person alien.

10 comments:

  1. lol nice review even though you didn't like it. I'm sure I will disagree with you when I read this book lol.

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    1. haha it's okay, that is the beauty of literature after all. thanks for reading the review!

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  2. This is the first negative review I've seen on this book. I think that your review changed my expectations on it. Pet names for girl/boyfriends make me want to throw up as well:P Thanks for the honest review!

    Danna

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    1. oh gosh, really? Usually I'm one who likes the book everyone else hated. It's weird being on the other side of things! Thanks for reading/commenting :) I'm interested to see what you think if you end up reading it!

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  3. I knew it! ( that this book wasn't gonna be my type.) I'm so tired of books with the 'mysterious dangerous guy' and the female heroine who's crazy about the guy..

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    1. This one may not be for you, then. It is a quite typical "hot cocky boy/girl who resists his charms until she doesn't" story. But if find yourself with the opportunity to read it there's always the chance you'll disagree!

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  4. I felt the same way! Although you're a little more generous since I only rated this one star. =)))

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    1. Ah, I'm not alone after all, yay! That extra half star is mostly because there were a few lines/scenes that just flat out made me laugh. Though I'm not entirely sure they were supposed to...

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  5. After reading so many (extremely) positive reviews about this book, it's kinda refreshing seeing it from another perspective! I still have to read Obsidian and I'm going to. We'll see what I think about it ;)

    Thanks for the great review!

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    1. Can't wait to see what you think! Thanks for reading the review :)

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