Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout

 

Okay, so the last book I read by this author, I did not like at all. But in my defense, I bought the omnibus edition of this series before I picked up FROM BLOOD AND ASH, and after that book ended up being a huge no for me, I kind of tabled this book and forgot about it... until I was going through my book stash, saw the shimmery cover mocking me from the pile, and thought, Hmm, I should probably give this a go before I sell it back to the store.

First, let's get one thing out of the way. OBSIDIAN is a TWILIGHT knockoff in a long line of TWILIGHT knockoffs. To its credit, I think it's one of the better ones. What can I say? I'm a sucker for a good alien romance, and I loved Katy, the book blogger heroine. Katy brings to the table what Bella did not, and in a lot of ways, she is the saving grace of this book. But there are many TWILIGHT similarities: Katy moves to somewhere rainy (West Virginia) from somewhere sunny and hot (Florida); the not-human guy basically lives in a commune with a bunch of not-human people who everyone is super suspicious about, one of whom is a manic pixie dream girl "sister" and the other, a beautiful ex-rival; he saves her from being run over by a truck and reveals his powers; there are "bad" versions of the not-human guy and one of them lengthily tries to kill her; the not-human guy is referred to as an angel in her half-dead euphoria; Katy and her human friends go shopping for a dance and something creepy happens, etc. etc.

The similarities may be numerous, but Armentrout always puts her own spin on the situation, so it never feels like one of the more blatant copies (not naming names, but I once read a Twiclone that was basically a beat for beat remix of TWILIGHT-- this was definitely not that). Instead, it kind of feels more like an homage: I mean, there's literally a line in here making fun of the "Do I dazzle you?" line. So I feel like Armentrout, to some extent, knew what she was doing. Katy has more of a relationship with her mom in this book than Bella did with either of her parents and I liked the portrayal of what it's like living with a single parent who works all day. Katy stands up for herself and doesn't let Daemon push her around, which is just SO refreshing compared to some of the other heroines in this genre of books who just go total doormat because abs. There's also more of a PG-13 edge to this book, including a shirtless makeout scene, and a rather UST-ridden scene involving a swimming hole.

I do think the lore revolving around the Arum and the Luxen is a little weak, and the "don't say anything or the government will get you" was sooo early aughts Matrix-era paranoia. But when the moment in the story came when I realized why this book was called OBSIDIAN, I was like O.M.G. Honestly, if Daemon wasn't SUCH an immature little shit for 50% of this book, I probably would have given this four or five stars for how compulsively readable it was. But Daemon was such a shit. I don't mind villainous heroes or antiheroes, but I don't like heroes who are just straight up mean to the heroine. He became tolerable after he and the heroine actually had some real conversations, but he was still saying mean shit right up to the end. I know to some extent this is a me thing (I don't really like arrogant heroes and it's rather clear this author does), but man. There's just no escaping it.

Will I be reading the sequel anyway? Oh yeah. Bring on the beta quartz and the creepy shadow men.

3 out of 5 stars