Book Review: Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout

With the exception of the first book, I devoured this series. I probably read the first book just as quickly as the others, I just read it months before I read the other ones. I don’t really remember why, but I feel like school probably got in the way. Ironic that taking English is all about reading, but you can’t read what you want to read. But thankfully I did have some good books this year, but onto the review.

Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout is a young adult novel. About aliens. Normally I’m not such a big fan of aliens, but Armentrout definitely made the aliens in this series hot. This is your basic normal human girl meets not so normal boy story. Kind of like Twilight, and please don’t shoot me for saying that because I know there are hordes of people who would like to ground that book to a pulp or set it on fire repeatedly. I’m just using it as an example, because both books are similar in plot where the guy tries to hide what he is, and the girl eventually finds out. And they’re both romances. And if you do like Twilight, yay for you. But I will say that Daemon Black (the not so normal boy) is much more…well just all around better than Edward Cullen.

Katy is the main protagonist, the normal human girl. She moves in next door to Daemon Black in West Virginia. Their first encounter, well, let’s just say it’s tense. Both Daemon and Katy are good characters in my opinion. Katy is a very timid, bookish person, and Daemon is sort of arrogant. But they work on each other. When they don’t want to kill each other. Which is more often than you would think.

Dee Black is Daemon’s sister who quickly befriends Katy. They bond over gardening. Gardening is the way that Katy gets out her anger, and I totally understand that. I don’t really garden, but I get the feeling of wanting to rip something out of the ground to get rid of the anger. Dee also takes a liking to gardening because of this, and boy does she have a lot to be angry over.

Humour is injected into the writing in this book, as is a lot of sexual tension. I have found that these books are a bit more sexual than other young adult books, but it never goes into graphic details, it just alludes to things.

I also have to say that I was starting to feel really bad for Katy in this book. I won’t tell you why because that would ruin part of the story, but just thought I’d mention it. Also, the prequel, Shadows, explains a lot of why Daemon acts the way he does in Obsidian, so I would suggest reading it after reading Obsidian.

Ultimately, this a great read, and I highly recommend it. It was also nice to read about something paranormal that isn’t about vampires and werewolves.