Review: Juliet Immortal by Stacey Jay

May 3rd 2013

Juliet Immortal by Stacey Jay

I received this book around Christmas time from Libby's boyfriend. Libby and I, are not typically the type to wait until xmas day to open gifts, so I began reading it days after receiving it. I have to say since then, I put it down and didn't find the time to pick it back up until a few days ago. I finished it and am finally able to give my honest opinion.

The Good:

Juliet was a decent enough heroine for me. She wasn't unlikeable, which for me isn't common. Too many times heroines are so unrealistically dumb, it's hard to connect with them. I didn't connect with Juliet but I did like her. =D

Ben the love interest being Mexican-American. Since Im from CT, Im more used to Caribbean Latinos, but I was happy to see more appealing Central American descended Latinos, as Mexican-Americans often get bad raps from our media for not being as attractive, and that sh*% just aint true.

It definitely was an interesting take on an old love story being a lie. Juliet was an immortal warrior type employed by The Ambassadors of Light, whilst Romeo was the same thing to The Mercenaries of Dark. Ambassadors strive to bring soul mates together, whilst Mercenaries fight to drive a soulmate to their cause, which almost ultimately results in the death of one of the destined soul mates. The author did a decent job of at least incorporating very important characters that were in the times of Romeo and his ill fated wife, but in a type of twist.

The Bad:

At the end of the book, she thanked her Spanish translator. I have to say that this may have been a bit premature. The Spanish used was a bit dated, and didn't seem like dialogue a teenager would use. I'm saying the Spanish wasn't correct(and seeing how Mexicans have different slang than my Cuban Spanish, I could see why it didn't seem consistent to me)it just seemed random and unnecessary. I almost want to say since a lot kids don't grow up bilingual, I would have rather him be a Mexican American who just understood it. Even better, if Spanish was so necessary, and the author couldn't portray that, writing "He starting off in a language I couldn't understand, I assumed Spanish because he was Mexican" would been ok. I've seen it in books, and I wasn't the least bit put off, as I would've preferred it not attempted than written in a way it didn't seem realistic.

The timeframe in which the story is told. Juliet described everything happening in three days. In her past, Romeo and she fell in love in five days. But falling someone you didn't know caused you to kill yourself in the first place dum-dum, or hadn't you learned that already? Juliet was a pretty good heroine aside from her insta-love personality quirk. She could tell she was in love within days, but I just wasn't that convinced. And tell me how it was the first day of school, but they already had a production of West Side Story/Romeo and Juliet ready to perform? I could be wrong, but I was sure Juliet mentioned it was the first day of the year for school. This could have been HER first day, but that wouldn't have explained why she didn't know Ben went to her school. He wasn't that new to the area, as her bestie had already known him for at least 3 weeks. I find it hard to believe a teenager would be sitting around not going to school for three weeks.

Making a non-significant villain a minority. I assume the villain introduced later is Korean, as his last name is Kim. But he was introduced far too late for me to not only care, but not see the threat. I'll be the first to say, if you're going to make a villain a Person of Color, at least do it so well, race aside, they're a great villain. Sometimes authors,especially white ones, have such a great fear of creating POC antagonists. It's not them being POC that sucks, it's that they're horribly written in comparison to their white counterparts. Don't half ass it for the sake of having ONE PoC face. Put as much time into them as you do your protagonists. It's only fair.

The organizations were never quite explained. Because I'm the biggest Supernatural fan, I assumed The Ambassadors of Light were similar to the Angels, and The Mercenaries of Dark were similar to Hell and the demons of season 5 and beyond, but if I hadn't had this reference, I wouldn't have had any ideas of what they did, and what the point of their presence was. I just didn't get the whole reality alternatives and stuff, it was kind of corny. Made me feel what was the whole point of the story's direction, if if were just going to turn out in an alternative reality?

It seemed rather short, so despite not having pacing issues, it seemed a bit rushed. I would've loved to see what the author could have done with 80-100 more pages, and been able to stretch the story out more.

With that being said, I give this a solid 2.5 stars. 

I hate the star system, as giving it such makes it seem as though I didn't enjoy this. It was at the very least written well enough for someone to get the point the author was trying to make. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit and look very forward to the sequel "Romeo Redeemed." Maybe with Romeo in the forefront, he'll tell the story a bit different than his past love and change my mind about this series.

My dreamcast is kind of corny. A bit run of the mill since there wasn't a ton of diversity. I kinda pictured Emilia Clarke, but as Daenerys Targayen for Juliet, or at least the body she took over.

Romeo was hard to picture, because he seemed like a rotting corpse. I kept thinking how people couldnt notice that :0 But even so I tried to picture because he seemed like her had the potential to be cute, or at least the body he took. Ben seemed like hot, so I pictured Tyler Posey.