I was thinking last night, and I realize I haven’t been super good with the blog this week so far. I totally skipped out on the Tuesday Top Ten this week. It’s about half way written but I’ve been trying to run my Divergent contest (don’t forget to enter!) and writing all about the Festival of Books and hanging out with my new TMI friends.

And I was thinking last night, as I said, and going…what on earth am I going to write about for the Book of the Week tomorrow? I haven’t really read anything new…not in the last week and I’m not going to remember anything. But I started reading Jennifer L. Armentrout’s Obsidian yesterday, and stayed up allll night to read it. And finished it, at nearly four a.m.

Four a.m.

So obviously I have myself a book of the week and a desperate need of sleep. Like…really badly. I have a book hangover. But it was worthy of a Book of the Week so here you go:

Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Genre:
young adult, science fiction, romance

Part of a Series?:
Yes. The first in the Lux series, which includes Onyx, Opal and Origin (out August 2013)

You May Like if You Liked:
Twilight, The Mortal Instruments, Lorien Chronicles

Plot Summary: 

The main character of this novel is Katy, who has just moved to a teensy tiny town in West Virginia from Florida with her mom. She isn’t exactly happy about it; she was happy in Florida and that’s where her father had lived and died. But here she is, stuck in West Virigina, with no friends. She goes over to the neighbors house one day to ask directions to the nearest grocery store and runs into Daemon, an intimidatingly good looking boy who turns out to be a jerk. And not just a jerk, but an asshole. So what’s Katy’s reaction to that?

And no it’s not to fall in love with him. No, she dishes it right back. There’s a hate relationship between them, and it only worsens when Katy becomes friends with Daemon’s sister, Dee, and Daemon is furious about it. Daemon says Dee is too good for people like Katy, even though he hardly knows her, and his rudeness just gets even worse. And it infuriates Katy.

But suddenly Daemon saves Katy’s life, by stopping time, and Katy is in on the secret. Daemon and his sister, Dee, are aliens from Lux, light bearing aliens that had to come to earth to escape the destruction of their home planet. They keep away from humans for two reasons: one, its pointless and two, its dangerous. If a Lux leaves their “trace” on a human, their enemy, the Arum, can find them and come hunting for them. And now that Daemon has saved Katy’s life, she’s lit up like the 4th of July and the Arum are coming.

Daemon is now Katy’s baby-sitter, and this is the last thing she wants, to spend more time with someone who hates her, and who she hates back. But despite all the hate, and cursing (and quite a lot of middle fingers thrown around), there’s something undeniable in Katy’s blood…and it might have to do a lot with the fact that Daemon walks around without a shirt often…

The Bad:

It did have a Twilight feel to it, at least in the beginning. The first 100 pages or so took me a lot to get through, mostly because I was holding back. Girl moves to small town, meets mysterious, ridiculously good looking boy who hates her right away, even though she hasn’t done anything to warrant hating, and he can do things that are unexplainable? Doesn’t sound like Twilight in the slightest….So that really turned me off at first.

Also, I tend to avoid teen paranormal romance (though this is more science fiction than paranormal), because it tends to be repetitive. The title and cover of this book jumped out at me, however, and when I looked it up, it tended to have mostly good reviews. So I gave it a shot, and I think maybe that held me back for some of the novel. I think I was expecting for it to be bad, but it didn’t end up that way at all.

The Good: 

For one thing, Armentrout’s writing, and writing style, is so infinitely better than Stephenie Meyer (sorry Twilight fans, I like the books but you gotta admit, they aren’t written well). She tells a really good story, and there’s a lot more about the background of the Lux aliens than we ever really got for the vampires of Forks. I like that the aliens are beautiful, insanely beautiful, because they are emulating what they see of humans, and so of course they reflect the best of what it us. But I also like that they are very human at the same time. Daemon would lay down his life for his sister, Dee, and is fiercely loyal to her but they also have a typical sibling dynamic that makes them super real.

I also like the “friendship” between Daemon and Katy. Throughout the entire novel, Katy hates Daemon and the feeling seems pretty mutual. They have moments together, when Daemon seems almost normal, almost nice but they spend most of their time sniping at each other and insulting each other. Daemon spends most of his time teasing the hell out of Katy and she spends most of her time coming up with insulting remarks back. Their attraction to each other seems to come mostly from that dislike of each, when you hate someone so much, and you argue with them so much, that you just want to jump their bones.

Which brings me to Daemon. My God. Daemon reminds me so much of Jace Wayland of the Mortal Instruments series. And though Jace will always remain my number one man, Daemon was undeniably sexy. I spent most of the book falling madly in love with him. He was incredibly sarcastic, snarky and spent most of his time in the book aware of his unbelievable good looks and attraction and using to his advantage and making both Katy and me blush like crazy. He comes up with little sexy nicknames like “Kittycat” and “Kitten” for Katy and is constantly teasing her about her nervous habits or her silly hobbies and the fact that they are so obviously attracted to each other, and Katy is so awkward and uncomfortable about it.

And that’s what makes the novel so good. The quiet build up, the serious sex appeal of it. The amount of times that they almost kiss infuriates me every single time. God, the amount of times that Daemon is shirtless in the novel makes me want ot splash my face with cold water. And seriously, Daemon makes it worse, with the things he says, and his snarky overconfidence and sex appeal. When Katy asks him how similar they are to humans, if they can have sex like humans, and he rolls on top of her, and she can, hem hem, tell that he is DEFINITELY human down there…I was blushing bright red. Why couldn’t he just tell her! Nope, he had to roll on top of her and show his manhood. He does that the entire book, just makes you want him so much, through subtlety. I think a lot of books (cough cough 50 shades cough cough) tend to go straight for it, but I like the subtle, the build up. And Daemon and Katy are perfect at that.

Plus there’s the fantasy/sci-fi aspect to it that I really liked. You know, I am so used to ghosts and demons and angels and vampires and all of that, it was really refreshing to have an alien. It was VERY science fiction, rather than paranormal and that was fun to read. I liked the story of the aliens fleeing their planet, to escape war and their destroyed planet and they have to hide from their enemies on planet earth. It was all so Doctor Who, with the time lords versus the Daleks, and it was easy to get caught up in their story. They were genuinely in danger, and you can almost forgive Daemon for treating Katy the way he does. When you’re from billions of light years away, away from your home planet, just trying to survive, you would probably do the same thing.

Rating:

4 out of 5 stars

Recommended or Not?: 

Definitely. If you’re looking for something refreshing and extremely sexy, but not overwhelming, to read, I definitely recommend this book. I’m off to go read the next one because I need some more Daemon in my life…

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