Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini

Helen Hamilton always knew she was different. But in her small hometown of Nantucket, different isn’t always a good thing, and so she tries her best to blend in. The arrival of the Delos family makes that close to impossible. Ever since Lucas and his family arrived, Helen has been having nightmares of walking through a dry and desolate land and waking to find dirt on her feet and sheets. She’s been seeing three woman weeping blood. And she’s felt this unexplainable urge to murder every member of the Delos family she’s come across. As Helen will learn, she really is different—so different that she’s not quite mortal. But with this new identity comes complications, because Helen may be part of an age old story fated to end in tragedy.

I’m not quite sure what drew me to Starcrossed to begin with. I was actually having difficulty finding a book that really interested me at the moment, and somehow, Starcrossed managed to fulfill that role. I’ll admit that I was initially quite intrigued by the strangeness of the story. I wanted to know more about Helen’s nightmares and her desire to murder the Delos family. And as I read on, I found the possible connection to ancient Greek mythology fascinating. However, my curiosity was not quite rewarded, because although I learned the answers to my questions, the story itself was not very good. The strangeness of some of the plot developments was difficult to adjust to, and I became irritated at the poor transitions from one scene to another. There were multiple times where I stopped reading for a moment only to pick the story up later and wonder how I had gotten to that point in the plot. This was greatly disappointing to me, especially because I felt that the ideas behind this story had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, their poor execution diminished the story overall as well.

Starcrossed may still be enjoyed by fans of Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton and The Eternal Ones by Kirsten Miller.

Rating: 3.25

Review copy from NetGalley