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Starting over sucks.

When we moved to West Virginia right before my senior year, I’d pretty much resigned myself to thick accents, dodgy internet access, and a whole lot of boring…. until I spotted my hot neighbor, with his looming height and eerie green eyes. Things were looking up.

And then he opened his mouth.

Daemon is infuriating. Arrogant. Stab-worthy. We do not get along. At all. But when a stranger attacks me and Daemon literally freezes time with a wave of his hand, well, something…unexpected happens.

The hot alien living next door marks me.

You heard me. Alien. Turns out Daemon and his sister have a galaxy of enemies wanting to steal their abilities, and Daemon’s touch has me lit up like the Vegas Strip. The only way I’m getting out of this alive is by sticking close to Daemon until my alien mojo fades.

If I don’t kill him first, that is.

Oh my. At times this book got pretty heated--and that's not just a crack at the fact Dee, Daemon and half the town Katy finds herself living in are beings of light. I've always been a sucker for antagonism leading to heated embraces and these two blow the park with their bickering, fighting, arguing, baiting and taunting of each other.

I bought this book mainly because it kind of sounded like Roswell (the old TV show starring Jason Behr? Yeah I miss it too, oh hot alien guys) and that's never a bad thing. Mind you this is almost nothing like that show--except that Daemon tends to save Katy's life A LOT--and deserves love in its own right?

If I had one complaint its that something tended to get repeated often. The green of Daemon's eyes or the intensity thereof. Katy's obsessive book reading/reviewing (which I can't really complain about since, as a book blogger, I do the same things. But I definitely see why my friends get sick of hearing about it when they have nothing invested in it and other things to worry over. Like when Daemon's shirt will come off again). The rather absentee parenting is also troubling, especially after Incidents 1, 2 and 3 happen to Katy. Even if her mom didn't know the ENTIRE story behind those incidents, I would have thought she'd be more...concerned.

What to love about the book however is much higher. Highly engaging characters who made me care? Check. Storyline that was coherent, multi-layered and not filled with constant angst? Check. Steamy hot romance? Check/*.  Armentrout doesn't pull many punches here; some of her characters start out fairly cardboard (Ash for instances and Simon, who's intentions I guessed a mile away), but as Katy got to know them so did we, which was beneficial.  One of the drawbacks of first person POV can sometimes be that you only see what that person sees and we only ever saw Ash being either bitchy or sneering.

Some plot threads I hope pan out how I want them too and I want other characters to get a bit of limelighting.  I'd like to know more about Adam for instance (not so much his brother Andrew) or Mr. Garrison.  Definitely hope we learn more about the Lux and Arum (the bad guys who are, you guessed it, based in darkness/shadows) War in the next book, Onyx.  Plus the short story coming out in Feb, Shadows, looks like its about Dawson.  Which, that's all I'm saying on that.

And for bonus points (mwaha that takes on a new meaning after this book), Armentrout pays sincere tribute to the book bloggers out there.  Katy is a hardcore blogger--she's in tears at one point because she can't update her blog and oh look she has that bi-polar 'Omg followers are great!/Omg why don't you comment?' thing too!.  It was sweet and pretty awesome, something I haven't seen in a book before honestly (validation!).


*(which brings up the point--this is definitely an 'older' YA book. Not that I believe in censorship, but for parents who are worried about the level of sexuality in a book for their kid, shirts come off and heavy make-out sessions happen and that's about the extent of it.)