THE DARKEST STAR
by Jennifer L. Armentrout
Tor Teen
October 30, 2018
From Goodreads:
When seventeen-year-old Evie Dasher is caught up in a raid at a notorious club known as one of the few places where humans and the surviving Luxen can mingle freely, she meets Luc, an unnaturally beautiful guy she initially assumes is a Luxen…but he is in fact something much more powerful. Her growing attraction for Luc will lead her deeper and deeper into a world she’d only heard about, a world where everything she thought she knew will be turned on its head…
The good people at Raincoast Books and Tor Teen provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.
With a premise that sounded interesting, and some really good reviews for this author (and her universe) I was excited for this book, but it ended up not being for me.
This book took place within Jennifer L. Armentrout’s universe that most people just call ‘Lux.’ It’s out world, but aliens—called Lux—live among us, and it seems like a mostly peaceful co-inhabitance. I hadn’t read any of the other books from this universe, but The Darkest Star is touted as a new story with new characters.
I’ve read books before where it felt obvious that I needed the rest of the series, but honestly, I didn’t feel that way with this. It genuinely felt like it was a standalone story that anyone, regardless of reading history, could get into.
Where it fell short for me was the pacing. Nothing really happened in the beginning. Or the middle. All the interesting stuff happened in the third act. Everything before that was just teenagers flirting with each other. I think the right readers would enjoy the entire book, but until aliens started to throw down, I was bored.
And they did eventually throw down. The aliens that Armentrout has come up with are interesting and intriguing. Their powers, their looks in various forms, their treatment by the human race. All things I wish had been explored deeper and way, WAY more. Instead, we were focused on one alien and one human as they pretended to hate each other until they were smootching.
This is the second two star review I’ve read this week, of this book. I was going to try it, but now I’m not so sure😐