‘Starcrossed’ – Josephine Angelini

When Helen hears the news of a new family coming to live in their small Nantucket home she thinks it might herald a new experience…talk about an understatement!

From the off we can see that there’s something unusual about Helen. It’s not until she meets the new family and attacks Lucas at school that she comes to see there’s more to the odd experiences she’s had over time. For reasons she doesn’t know straight away she is both irresistibly drawn to Lucas at the same time as wanting to kill him. Nobody can see a way out of this but, eventually, they end up reconciling their obvious differences.

What follows is unusual to say the least!

We see to have an awful lot of things going on here. We have: a mysterious family; unexpected skills; unusual situations that some know about but not others; weird dreams; unexplained nighttime activity and descendants of Greek gods with special skills.

Breaking the story into separate components it’s beyond ridiculous. The love-story is clearly doomed from the start, and we don’t ever get any hints that it’ll be anything other than a disaster. Helen is more than a little reckless with her safety and new friendships, but with everyone hiding details it’s perhaps inevitable that problems will arise.

While it may be far-fetched the story was relatively engaging. The nods to Greek mythology kept it entertaining and it was certainly left in an exciting place for the next phase.