Book Review: Starcrossed, Josephine Angelini

Reading Level:      Young Adult 

Hardcover:           496 Pages 

Publisher:             HarperTeen, May 31, 2011

Parasols:              4

Helen Hamilton has always been slightly different.  Taller, prettier, smarter than your average teenage girl.  But she starts to think she is going crazy when she sees three weeping women.  Her nightmares seem real when she awakes with dusty dirt all over her sheets and legs.

Her mind doesn't really go crazy until she lays eyes on the newest student that has landed on the tony island of Nantucket.  Lucas Delos is beautiful, breathtaking and Helen wants him dead.  At every opportunity she tries to kill him.  But he has a support group.  It's not until Helen is made aware of her destiny does she realize that The Iliad is not some quaint story that Homer conjured up.  It is her life.  She is Helen, the Helen that brought about a war.  And how that story plays out, is thrilling, exciting, and damn sexy.

I really enjoyed this book a lot.  I was able to talk to Josie about it and my love of the Homer classics just made it so that I had to read this one.  I've always preferred The Iliad over The Odyssey.  More excitement! 

Helen's gradual knowledge of who she is and how she has to protect her no-so-clued-in-dad, is as exciting as any story.  There will definitely be some comparisons to Twilight. My favorite part of the story was trying to figure out who was who reincarnated from The Iliad. Josie was not giving anything up.  It ends on a cliffhanger and I can already hear the masses wanting more, more, more!

You don't need to know the story of Helen of Troy to enjoy this.  It's a love story in it's own right and a story in it's own right as well.  By the way, I really want this sequel badly!