ARC, 306 pages
Published by Simon Pulse (10.4.2011)
Series: N/A
Source: Gift from Nancy @ Tales of a Ravenous Reader (way back when)
Thanks, Nancy!
All Chelsea wants to do this summer is hang out with her best friend, hone her talents as an ice cream connoisseur, and finally get over Ezra, the boy who broke her heart. But when Chelsea shows up for her summer job at Essex Historical Colonial Village (yes, really), it turns out Ezra’s working there too. Which makes moving on and forgetting Ezra a lot more complicated…even when Chelsea starts falling for someone new.
Maybe Chelsea should have known better than to think that a historical reenactment village could help her escape her past. But with Ezra all too present, and her new crush seeming all too off limits, all Chelsea knows is that she’s got a lot to figure out about love. Because those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it….s
I honestly don’t know why the hell I even picked this one (seriously, Geo, did you even read the synopsis?!). There was way too much history crap in it, and I only made it to about page 20. Sad, I know. But when I see words like ‘Revolutionary’ and ‘Colonial,’ my eyes glaze over and I zone out for paragraphs at a time. History bores me to tears!
I wanted to read it for my contemporary challenge, but I looked over the books I’ve read and figured out I only needed one more instead of 3, so I’m canning this one. I’ve got way too many other books to read for review and for challenges. I may try it again someday, after my TBR pile has thinned out quite a bit.
Nook ebook (487 pages)
How do you defy destiny?Helen Hamilton has spent her entire sixteen years trying to hide how different she is—no easy task on an island as small and sheltered as Nantucket. And it’s getting harder. Nightmares of a desperate desert journey have Helen waking parched, only to find her sheets damaged by dirt and dust. At school she’s haunted by hallucinations of three women weeping tears of blood . . . and when Helen first crosses paths with Lucas Delos, she has no way of knowing they’re destined to play the leading roles in a tragedy the Fates insist on repeating throughout history.
As Helen unlocks the secrets of her ancestry, she realizes that some myths are more than just legend. But even demigod powers might not be enough to defy the forces that are both drawing her and Lucas together—and trying to tear them apart.
Some of the happenings were just plain absurd, and Helen annoyed me. Plus, I found the 3rd person view to be cumbersome and the writing sophomoric.
Helen’s friend was talking about the new family at school, the Delos family. Helen flipped her shit and started yelling something about pathetic gawking hicks, saying she was ‘sick to death of the town’s fixation with them and she hoped she never had to meet, see, or share breathing space with any of them.’ She then proceeded to storm away, running off and crying. W….t…..f?
When she meets Lucas for the first time, these are her thoughts:
Meeting his eyes was an awakening. For the first time in Helen’s life she knew what pure, heart-poisoning hatred was.
What the hell? How can you feel like that about someone you’ve never even met? There’s probably a reason behind it that I didn’t find out because I didn’t keep reading…which would be fine, if she was actually concerned about the way she was feeling. If upon meeting someone for the first time I flew into a blind rage, throwing myself at him and trying to spoon his eyes out with my bare hands, I’d be just a little worried at the onset of such volatile emotions. I’d wonder where they came from. But that’s just me.
Deep inside, she knew she would have killed that boy if she could, and she didn’t even feel guilty about it.
and
She found it hard to so much as say his name without wanting to punch someone in the head.
Seriously? Again, how could you not have some sort of worry in the corner of your mind why you were suddenly acting like that? There should have been a ‘I don’t know where these feelings are coming from, I don’t even know him’ in there somewhere…
Oh, and here’s my favorite: One of the terrible side effects of feeling like she somehow already knew Lucas was that she was starting to idealize him, making him more perfect than was humanly possible. Which was uncomfortable because she also still wanted to kill him.
You’re perfect, I want to choke the life out of you.
Then there were scenes where Helen just ‘knew’ something, but there was no rationalization to lead up to the conclusion, or that it was a gut feeling. She just knew.
She had never seen this one guy before, but somehow she knew that she should be very afraid of him.
Um? If he looked scary, or powerful, or something, I’d understand. Or if she said it was an instinctual feeling. Nope, she just knew.
There was way too much WTFery going on for me to be able to deal with right now. I have better things to read.
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