Review: Juliet Immortal

Juliet Immortal
by Stacey Jay

Published August 9th 2011 by Delacorte Books for Young Readers

The most tragic love story in history . . .

Juliet Capulet didn't take her own life. She was murdered by the person she trusted most, her new husband, Romeo Montague, a sacrifice made to ensure his own immortality. But what Romeo didn't anticipate was that Juliet would be granted eternity, as well, and would become an agent for the Ambassadors of Light. For 700 years, she's fought Romeo for the souls of true lovers, struggling to preserve romantic love and the lives of the innocent. Until the day she meets someone she's forbidden to love, and Romeo, oh Romeo, will do everything in his power to destroy that love.

 -goodreads

“She will fight for light, and he for dark,
Battling through the ages for loves sweet spark.
Wherever two souls adore truly, you will find them, lo,
The brave Juliet and the wicked Romeo.” 

Rating: 3 stars
Review: 
Hrmm..... where to begin. The thing is, I really really really wanted to love this book! I was so excited about it for months and months! And when I finally read it......
It kind of fell short of my expectations. 
Don't get me wrong, the book was extremely creative and original. Heck, I wish I could think up a twist to a timeless love story like that! I really feel like the premise of the book--Romeo vs. Juliet, fighting for soul mates, etc--was SO brilliant and had so much potential ....it's just that the actual storyline just didn't really live up to it.


Jay's Juliet was fine. I really liked how she worked to reconcile her own bitterness and hate from her death with being an Ambassador of Light. I loved that she had hate in her heart, but at the same time was truly a good person: strong, kind, and selfless. 


Romeo, oh evil Romeo, where the heck were you when I was reading Shakespeare's play?? I know he's supposed to be all evil and a Mercenary and everything, but I actually really liked him. OKAY, so he did have some kinda evil moments, but the thing is, it's hard to hate a character that already hates himself so much for a past mistake. He was definitely a complex character.... and, unfortunately, I'm kind of a sucker for those.


The part of the book that really bothered me was...... okay, I'm just gonna come out and say it:
I did not like the love story aspect of the book! 
GUYS. This almost never happens. Oh, and just to clarify, I'm talking about the Juliet-and-Ben relationship here. Nothing against Ben, really--the guy is definitely someone a LOT of girls would fall for, and believe me, he had his swoon-worthy moments..... but I just didn't see the connection, y'know? With Juliet and Ben, it was a total love-at-first-sight kind of thing. And I'm just not a fan of the whole instalove relationship. I didn't really see them falling for each other and connecting. And that really bothered me. Like,througout the entire book.

A part of me really wanted Juliet and Romeo to somehow end up together--because, come on, they're freaking Romeo and Juliet! Even if the technicalities of their love story wasn't all that lovely and technically Romeo was evil, they're so iconic as the greatest love story couple that I just really wanted them to somehow salvage the love story! And maybe, I would've been okay with the fact that Juliet did fall in love with someone else... but there wasn't even an actual connection between Juliet and Ben! I ended up being more excited for the Romeo-Juliet scenes than the Ben-Juliet scenes!

On another note, though, I will be reading the sequel, because hello? Romeo Redeemed? A whole book about bad boy Romeo? Oh, I am so there! Unfortunately, I'm not all that excited because be his turn to fall in love with someone, and of all the people, it had to be Ariel. Don't know how I feel about that yet, but we'll see...