Review: Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini

Goodreads summary:
Helen Hamilton has spent her entire sixteen years trying to hide how different she is - no easy task on an island as small and sheltered as Nantucket. And it's getting harder. Nightmares of a desperate desert journey have Helen waking parched, only to find her sheets damaged by dirt and dust. At school she's haunted by hallucinations of three women weeping tears of blood . . . and when Helen first crosses paths with Lucas Delos, she has no way of knowing they're destined to play the leading roles in a tragedy the Fates insist on repeating throughout history.

As Helen unlocks the secrets of her ancestry, she realizes that some myths are more than just legend. But even demigod powers might not be enough to defy the forces that are both drawing her and Lucas together - and trying to tear them apart.

I was really excited to dig into this book after discovering it had greek mythology in it. The book starts off interestingly enough with the non-traditional meeting of the main characters Helen and Lucas; they start of hating each other for no reason (180 degrees from love at first sight!).

It might have been the third person narrative but I could not for the life of me like Helen. She was completely devoid of personality. All she wanted to do most of the time was scream or run away. The reason why the Delos family pays her any attention is because of the heritage running through her bloodstream and the special powers she's got. Lucas wasn't much better, a typical pretty boy with a questionable attachment to the incredibly dull female lead.

I did like some characters of the book which included Helen's best friend Claire (a really good friend who stuck by Helen through Helen's unpredictable-bordering-on-crazy mood swings) and Lucas' cousins Jason and Hector who were way more interesting than Lucas. Man, the book would have been more enjoyable with them as the main characters.

The book tries so hard to create a forbidden romance it seemed like the greek mythology served to explain how forbidden Lucas and Helen's love for each other was. Frankly their love was so instant and boring. When they declared their love for each other it felt so meaningless because there just wasn't any chemistry or development to support those words.

Another problem I had with the book was there was no epic factor. Come on, if a book's based on mythology, it's got to be epic! The story just wasn't that exciting (plus most of it was focused on the drab romance).

To sum up my feelings for this book: expected better, disappointed.