Juliet Immortal (Juliet Immortal, #1) by Stacey Jay

 

Summary:

 

Fans of Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver and Becca Fitzpatrick's Hush will relish this intense paranormal love story featuring Romeo and Juliet, literary history's most tragic couple, who meet again, not as true lovers, but truly as enemies.
The most tragic love story in history . . .

Juliet Capulet didn't take her own life. She was murdered by the person she trusted most, her new husband, Romeo Montague, a sacrifice made to ensure his own immortality. But what Romeo didn't anticipate was that Juliet would be granted eternity, as well, and would become an agent for the Ambassadors of Light. For 700 years, she's fought Romeo for the souls of true lovers, struggling to preserve romantic love and the lives of the innocent. Until the day she meets someone she's forbidden to love, and Romeo, oh Romeo, will do everything in his power to destroy that love.

"These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume."
—Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Summary & Photo taken from Goodreads.com

Length: 307 page (Hardcover)

Source: Toronto Public Library

Publication Date: August 9th 2011 by Delacorte Books for Young Readers

 

After ages of seeing this one being reviewed on a number of blogs I finally broke down and decided to read this after reading Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer's review of the second book in the series Romeo Redeemed (Click Here to read her review) I figured what the hell lets give the series a try.

 

I had really high hopes for this book. I'm not a big Shakespeare fan but I do tend to like novels that are a play on his well..plays. His among the only works that I don't overly mind being reused and modernized and I've been really lucky to read some very good ones. Juliet Immortal, was unfortunately not one of the good ones.

 

The book was more of a filler book for me. I needed a quick read and I was hoping that this one would be really good and it really wasn't. I mean yeah the book started off with a really intense scene where Juliet enters Ariel Dragland's body after they've been in a car crash but then things got a wee bit bizarre. All of a sudden the dead guy next to her is Romeo who is in another boy's body and she's running away into the arms of a perfect stranger that happens to be driving by and what do you know there's an instant attraction between Juliet and the boy named Ben.

 

You see Juliet is an Ambassador of Light, she pops in every once in awhile down the centuries to help soulmates stay together while Romeo (who murdered Juliet) tries to rip them apart  and get one of the soulmates to join the Mercenaries.

 

The concept of there being the Ambassadors of Light and the Mercenaries was really interesting when I first started the novel and I was really eager to find out more about both societies but that information was rather elusive throughout the length of the novel and very little was said about them. I found that really strange.

 

Then there were my issues with the characters themselves. Besides the bad dialogue between them they were so awkward, annoying and frustrating I found very little to like about any of them including Juliet because of what a miserable person she was deep down. I just couldn't handle all the low points her character had that weren't properly balanced out with good spots. The other characters might not have even bothered to be there they were so forgettable.

 

I also had issues with the fact that the story was told over only a matter of 3 days. I found it so completely weird and I hated the fact that the whole book seemed extremely rushed. I couldn't catch my breath and the story line from the middle until the end became very jumbled and disjointed leading me to get rather annoyed with the book and it got to the point where I just wanted to finish it so I wouldn't have to read any more about it.

 

Despite all that though I won't give it the dreaded one star rating because there was potential for the book to be really good if the book didn't have the issues I had with it. I'm not sure if I would recommend this book at all because it wasn't all that memorable to be honest but if I had to I'd probably recommend this to YA fans who like a different take on the classic R&J story though I suggest borrowing this book instead of committing to a purchase. I doubt if I'll ever read the second book Romeo Redeemed but if I do it won't be for a long time.

 

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