Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Release Date: August 9, 2011
Pages: 304
Why I read it: I love Shakespeare and a retelling of Romeo and Juliet sounded really exciting.
Summary: A retelling of Romeo and Julie. However Juliet doesn't kill herself, Romeo kills her in order to achieve immortality. Romeo works for the Mercenaries, who want to destroy love and keep soul mates apart, while Juliet is an Ambassador for the Light, working to keep romantic love and soul mates together. They both come back to earth and take over the bodies of the living to fight over preserving or destroying lovers. However, this time, Juliet finds herself falling in love, which is forbidden.
My thoughts: I found the concept of the book very intriguing, a new twist on the story of Romeo and Juliet. The big motivators in the book were love and hate, obviously, but both Romeo and Juliet were motivated by both. Juliet acted out of revenge, while Romeo had a mix of regret and evil motivating him. I thought it was a nice balance.
I am tired of love triangles in books, but this love hexagon, I guess, worked for me. There were a lot of twists and turns as to who were the soul mates Juliet was sent to protect and whether Juliet was going to fall in love with "forbidden" Ben or go back to Romeo. I felt like I knew the outcome of the book, but didn't quite expect the little twist at the ending, even though I thought I knew the plot/characters of Romeo and Juliet really well!
The inner dialogue in Juliet's head wore on me for a little while. It went on and on and on and I sometimes felt a little bored when she was rationalizing all the decisions in her head. I wanted her to just make a decision! The book is mostly told from the point of view of Juliet, and when I got a chapter from the point of view of Romeo, I thought it would take away from the book. I actually wish there had been a couple more parts inside of Romeo's head, because he was a more complex character than I originally thought.
I would give this book a 3, I did like it, but found Juliet's inner dialogue a little grating at times.
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