Review of Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout

by: Sarah

 Author Website/Goodreads/Amazon

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.