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Deity by Jennifer L. Armentrout Book Review

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Deity by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Fire flower

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GoodReads Summary:

“History is on repeat, discount and things didn’t go so well the last time. “

Alexandria isn’t sure she’s going to make it to her eighteenth birthday–to her Awakening. A long-forgotten, sick fanatical order is out to kill her, and if the Council ever discovers what she did in the Catskills, she’s a goner… and so is Aiden. 

If that’s not freaky enough, whenever Alex and Seth spend time “training”–which really is just Seth’s code word for some up-close and personal one-on-one time–she ends up with another mark of the Apollyon, which brings her one step closer to Awakening ahead of schedule. Awesome. 

But as her birthday draws near, her entire world shatters with a startling revelation and she’s caught between love and Fate. One will do anything to protect her. One has been lying to her since the beginning. Once the gods have revealed themselves, unleashing their wrath, lives will be irrevocably changed… and destroyed. 

Those left standing will discover if love is truly greater than Fate…

My Review:

Please note that while this review will NOT have spoilers for this novel, it most likely will have spoilers for the first novel, Half Blood. You can read the review for that here. It may also include spoilers for the second book, Pure, the review of which can be read here. 

Is it possible to give this book 6 stars out of 5? Seriously. I keep thinking that this series canNOT possibly get better, and it totally gets better.

This one is SO steamy, and what I have waited for has finally happened, but not easily, of course. Sigh. I need to move on to the next book.

This book feels like the climax, which makes me wonder what happens in Apollyon to need Sentinel as the final book. There is so much build up, so much tension, so much electricity, and Alex is smack in the middle of it. She has so much to deal with. Her mother and best friend are dead. People hate her. She has to go Council, where half bloods aren’t exactly welcome. She is madly in love with Aidan but her bond with Seth makes her attracted to him as well. She has to train as a Sentinel and an Apollyon, and oh yeah, there’s that whole daimon plan that her mother told her about before she died. No big deal.

So all of that put together really makes for a tense filled novel. One minute, you’re sighing as Aidan and Alex share an intimate scene (I am so rooting for Aidan St. Delphi in this series), and you’re reluctantly also sighing when Seth and Alex share a scene. You’re on the edge of your seat as Alex is treated terribly at the Council and you know there is so much more to it than you know. Her life is threatened, she almost dies. SO much is going on in this novel that it was a wonder that I didn’t finish it in a couple hours.

I really loved that the problems of the books are continuing. New problems are coming up, but its an extension of the previous problems. Jennifer Armentrout is creating a great series by creating this building issue that eventually is going to explode. I keep thinking that maybe things will be figured out and then the world gets even more mysterious and slipperier. She really knows how to build the story for you, so you can’t help but want to continue. I finished this at 3:30 am, and it took a lot of resolve to tell myself to go to bed, and that I could read the next book in the morning. She is that addicting.

Plus, can I just add how seriously sexy both Aidan and Seth are? I mean, I’m all about Aidan St. Delphi, but Seth has his moments where you’re like, “I seriously hate to love this guy.” Props to Jennifer L. Armentrout for creating these characters that make me want to fan myself.

Read these books, seriously. I’m moving on to book four now. Ciao!

Rating:

5 out of 5 stars

Pure by Jennifer L Armentrout Book Review

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Pure by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Fire flower

You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Author Website

GoodReads Summary:

There is need. And then there is Fate… 
Being destined to become some kind of supernatural electrical outlet isn’t exactly awesome–especially when Alexandria’s “other half” is everywhere she goes. Seth’s in her training room, medications outside her classes, pill and keeps showing up in her bedroom–so not cool. Their connection does have some benefits, troche like staving off her nightmares of the tragic showdown with her mother, but it has no effect on what Alex feels for the forbidden, pure-blooded Aiden. Or what he will do–and sacrifice–for her. 
When daimons infiltrate the Covenants and attack students, the gods send furies–lesser gods determined to eradicate any threat to the Covenants and to the gods, and that includes the Apollyon… and Alex. And if that and hordes of aether-sucking monsters didn’t blow bad enough, a mysterious threat seems willing to do anything to neutralize Seth, even if that means forcing Alex into servitude… or killing her. 
When the gods are involved, some decisions can never, ever be undone.

My Review:

Please note that while this review will NOT have spoilers for this novel, it most likely will have spoilers for the first novel, Half Blood. You can read the review for that here. 

These books literally just keep getting better and better. I absolutely loved the first one but I’m not going to lie, I saw a ton of similarities between it and the first Vampire Academy novel. But I really loved the characters, and I love the story, and the idea of the Greek gods, and the way she represents it as opposed to others. I was even more relieved when I read this second book, and realized that it took a much different direction than the storyline of VA.

I really love the issue that Jennifer L. Armentrout creates. Alex is the second Apollyon of the generation, which makes her better than any pure blood, half blood or mortal but she has been a half blood her entire life, and she still technically is a half blood. She still feels the pains of being a half blood. You either train your butt to become a Sentinel or a Guard, or you drink the elixir, and became compliant, a slave. One step, one TOE out of line and thats it for a half. Pures are everything: they have a say in how the world is run, and the laws are all in their favor. They have no regard for the halfs, and some are so high strung that the death of a half means absolutely nothing to them.

So I think its very hard for Alex. She is the Apollyon, and so much is on her shoulders but she still feels that sting of being a half blood, especially since most of her friends are half bloods and I think that internal struggle and that issue she has with trying to figure herself out, now that she has even more to learn, is really what makes the core of this novel. There’s a lot of action but I think so much of what makes this novel so easy to bust through is the fact that there is so much tension, mentally and emotionally and in the politics and in the relationships and friendships that she has. Everything seems so calculated and everyone seems to have their own different opinion and plan for her and its a lot for her to sift through. She doesn’t know who to trust completely, or who to listen to.

Which leads to me to the whole Seth and Aidan thing. Aidan is a pure, her trainer, but she’s madly in love with her, even though they most definitely canNOT be together. Then there’s is Seth, the first Apollyon, who Alex is bonded to, and so they have this intense attraction to each other, but she’s so unsure if she really feels that way or if its just the bond. And even this bond can’t take away the love that she feels for Aidan. The triangle would normally bother me incredibly but it doesn’t so much because neither one of them really gives her much, which only serves to frustrate her more, which frustrates me to no end either. I adore them both for different reasons, though I’m totally rooting for Aidan. I think that the differences between the two: Aidan, a pure Sentinel and Seth, a half blood Apollyon, only makes her conflicting thoughts on what is going on in her community even worse.

In all, it was a satisfying sequel to the first novel that I enjoyed so much. I think it really takes the issues of the first book, expands it, and expands the universe that she has built. She really presents real conflicts, conflicts that exist anywhere, and have existed, and so they feel so much more real, especially since Alex is a half blood, and she’s on the bottom scale of everything. I love all the characters of this novel, and the story. I’m about half way through the third book, which I can’t wait to review for you all. I’m catching up fast!

Rating:

5 out of 5 stars

Half Blood Book Review

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Half Blood by Jennifer L. Armentrout

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You Can Find the Book At:

GoodReads

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Author Website

GoodReads Summary:

The Hematoi descend from the unions of gods and mortals, information pills and the children of two Hematoi pure bloods have godlike powers. Children of Hematoi and mortals–well, not so much. Half-bloods only have two options: become trained Sentinels who hunt and kill daimons or become servants in the homes of the pures. Seventeen-year-old Alexandria would rather risk her life fighting than waste it scrubbing toilets, but she may end up slumming it anyway. There are several rules that students at the Covenant must follow. Alex has problems with them all, but especially rule #1:Relationships between pures and halfs are forbidden. Unfortunately, she’s crushing hard on the totally hot pure-blood Aiden. But falling for Aiden isn’t her biggest problem–staying alive long enough to graduate the Covenant and become a Sentinel is. If she fails in her duty, she faces a future worse than death or slavery: being turned into a daimon, and being hunted by Aiden. And that would kind of suck.

My Review:

I absolutely love the Lux series by Jennifer L. Armentrout. I do. I remember feeling really apprehension about buying it because I didn’t like the cover, and some people had said it was too romantic and mushy but I ended up really liking, and I think a big part of that was the fact that the main character, Katy, was a book blogger, and Daemon was a hot alien who reminded me of Jace Wayland. But I do enjoy the series, and I eagerly await the final installment.

That being said, I’ve had quite a few people bugging me to read her other series, the Covenant series, for awhile now, some of them a little more demanding than others (I’m looking at you, Erin and Eilidh). I read a lot of books os it was on my “to-read” list but I just couldn’t make time for it. Then yesterday, for some reason, even though I have a huge stack of books to read, I decided to pick up the first in the series, Half Blood.

I finished it last night.

I think I’m already way more in love with this series than I am with the Lux series. and I do genuinely love that series. But oh my god, Half Blood absolutely blew me away. There’s something different that Jennifer Armentrout captures in these novels that I just don’t think comes across in Lux, and its just a great book. I immediately went to my friend, and was like “I’m broke, help me find the others” and she lent me the second one on Kindle, which I am EAGERLY waiting to read once I’m done reviewing it all for you.

The main character, Alexandria who goes by Alex, is just a seriously awesome character. She is so, excuse the language, but badass. She’s a fighter, she has a tough attitude and she’s stubborn as all hell. She has to prove that she is worth to stay at the Covenant and she has to work hard to prove that, but her temper and her stubbornness gets in the way of that sometimes and it makes you love her as a character. I hate perfect characters that always tend to do the right thing, and even when they do the wrong thing, its because they were trying to do the right thing. Alex is a very real character, and she has her own doubts and ideas and she gets distracted and she flies off the handle and she doesn’t always do the right thing, and I absolutely love that. I love that you’re so in her head that you feel her confidences and her doubts and her emotions. She feels so real to you.

I love all the other characters as well. Seth is pretty interesting and I’m curious to see how the interactions between him and Alex continue in the future of the books. I can’t say much more than that about him because it would be wicked spoiler like. I adore Aidan, because well, you’re totally supposed because he’s super hot, and a badass fighter and Alex is mad about him, and yeah, now I’m mad about him. Caleb is a fun character, who I wish I had as my best friend. There are so many characters, and even if you only see them for so long, you know them. That’s a mark of Jennifer L. Armentrout. She creates these massive worlds but she builds all the characters to seem real, and she does it so quickly.

I really enjoyed the story, and really whipped through it. Its a very different view of the whole demigod idea, which is a popular choice of story telling in the past few years but its interesting to see the different approaches that you get and I really like this one. I think its interesting how there’s almost a hierarchy based on if you’re a pure blood or a half blood, and even when you’re a half blood, whether you’re a servant or a Sentinel. Its so interesting which makes me believe that there’s going to be way more to this story than just Alex’s struggles but perhaps the struggle between the different classes of demigods. It should be super interesting. Now, I’m going to urge all of you to go read this book, so I can stop writing this review and go read the second one!

Rating:

5 out of 5 stars