Review: Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout

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.

PUBLISHER: Entangled Teen

PAGES: 335

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I’ve seen this book literally everywhere since I started book blogging half-a-year ago. I’ll be honest, at first I tuned this book out. The cover kind of freaked me out. Come on, people. The man has freakishly green eyes. Even worse, it’s one of those covers where the eyes follow you wherever you go. You know? I could be hiding underneath my bed and I could still look at Obsidian’s cover and Cover Daemon would be staring me down with those haunting eyes. Maybe it’s a personal thing. It looked like a cheesy romance novel (I try to stay away from those). After awhile, though, I got tired of seeing Obsidian everywhere. When I saw that it was free on Amazon, I thought, why not? Might as well. So many reviewers were comparing it to Twilight. “It’s like Twilight, but with aliens,” a large majority of Goodreads said. In eighth grade, I practically defined “Twi-hard”. You could have looked in the dictionary in 2008 underneath the word “Twi-hard” and my name would have been in bold, 50-size print. Those were some dark days. Needless to say, when I picked this book up, I wasn’t looking for a repeat of those dark, frightening days of loving Edward Cullen and trading Twilight quotes with friends over email…

MORAL RATING:

PG-13/R: There was cussing, sexual innuendo, violence, attractive aliens (like whaaa? Armentrout pulls it off), and one slightly steamy scene

THE GOOD:

I won’t try to pretend like this novel didn’t have a ton of similarities to Twilight. It totally did. But, instead of an overly-clumsy Bella Swan, the reader gets to know feisty and strong Katy. Instead of sparkly, pasty-white, constantly-looking-constipated Edward Cullen, the reader is introduced to moody, unpredictable, and surprisingly sweet Daemon Black. Hey, I’m not complaining. The writing is good and kept my interest throughout this novel. I was wondering how Armentrout was going to make aliens attractive. I’ve seen E.T. and, lemme tell you, E.T. ain’t attractive. Whenever I think of aliens, I think of that movie. Armentrout deals with this surprisingly well; at times, she even pokes fun of the whole alien concept. At one point of the book, Katy even compares her new knowledge of Daemon’s other-worldliness to her previous knowledge of aliens like the ones she saw in E.T. Yes!

Also, I loved how Katy was a book blogger. I saw another book blogger mention this in her review. I’ve only been book blogging for half a year, but it was such fun to read about Katy posting “Top Ten Tuesdays” and “Waiting on Wednesdays” and dreading giving books 1 Star reviews. It was like a special shout-out to the book blogging community as a whole and I loved it!

THE BAD:

There wasn’t much that I objected to in this novel; I enjoyed it quite a lot, actually! So, the following is not really “bad”, but me explaining what I was expecting of this book. Before I started this book, I made sure to look at the reviews. So many people said that Daemon was a total jerk. I really didn’t want to read a book where the female character was treated horribly by her love interest and, at the end of the day, she was still hopelessly in love with him and ended up letting him walk all over her (Of Poseidon, anyone??!). That’s not attractive and that shouldn’t be branded as such. I have no interest in reading romanticized abuse. Needless to say, I was afraid that that was what was going to occur in this book. I was pleasantly surprised! Daemon does have his jerk moments, but they’re more an element of his character and back story. He also has sweet, protective moments. Katy doesn’t take his crap and that’s one of the reasons he feels drawn to her. He puts up so many walls to keep her away, but, well, chemistry and destiny… Could’ve been a bad thing, but Armentrout dealt with Daemon’s behavior and Katy’s reaction to it very well!

There was a slightly steamy scene in this book that I felt wasn’t necessary, but I could tell that it was coming up. No actual sex, but still bleh. 😦

SOUNDTRACK:

I adore this cover of Beyonce’s Crazy in Love! While Daemon and Katy may not admit to themselves that they are crazy in love with each other, I’m pretty sure the reader can tell just fine. 😉

THE VERDICT:

Overall, I’d give this one 4.5/5 hearts! Armentrout is a new author for me and I’ve already bought the next book in this series. I genuinely enjoyed this book and its endearing characters and I devoured it! Addicted is one word to describe it. 🙂