Chaos of Stars

Author: Kiersten White

Release Date: September 10th, 2013
Publisher: Harper Teen 
Genre(s): YA Fantasy (Mythology)
Pages: 288
*stand alone*

Spoilers are hidden! Highlight the page to see them:) 

Summary (Goodreads):
Isadora’s family is seriously screwed up.

Of course, as the human daughter of Egyptian gods, that pretty much comes with the territory. She’s also stuck with parents who barely notice her, and a house full of relatives who can’t be bothered to remember her name. After all, they are going to be around forever—and she’s a mere mortal.

Isadora’s sick of living a life where she’s only worthy of a passing glance, and when she has the chance to move to San Diego with her brother, she jumps on it. But Isadora’s quickly finding that a “normal” life comes with plenty of its own epic complications—and that there’s no such thing as a clean break when it comes to family. Much as she wants to leave her past behind, she can’t shake the ominous dreams that foretell destruction for her entire family. When it turns out there may be truth in her nightmares, Isadora has to decide whether she can abandon her divine heritage after all.

Review:

That cover is gorgeous! (*.*) I’m totally star-struck. (Sorry couldn’t resist. xD  But really! That cover is seriously one of the most gorgeous covers I’ve seen all year.  I think it even beats House of Hades’s cover, which, as a diehard Riordan fan, admitting that is a crime punishable by being thrown into Tarturus.)

Now that cover in relation to the content… I think it was wasted on such a mediocre book.   >.<

I have iffy feelings about this book.  It was a nice story, but it wasn’t dazzling (see what I did there xD). A lot of my iffy feelings had to do with the insta-love and the plot itself (more on those later).     

This book was a little slow, and the blurb was definitely misleading. At first I had thought the book was about those ominous dreams the blurb had mentioned, but it was more focused on Isadora’s personal growth and her relationship with her family.  (I guess the “main” plot was about those dreams, but it really took a back seat compared to the focus on Isadora and her growth.)  I wasn’t sure if this lack of plot was a good thing or not because while I liked how the focus on family gave this book more depth than if it had been an “action” type novel, it made the ending so anticlimactic.  The story just died in the end (and no, this is not a spoiler).         

The best way to describe Isadora is to call her… a teen.  She epitomized the stereotypical, raging- hormones teen.  She was sarcastic, a bit of a rebel, very snarky, and irrational. But even with her loud personality, she was a forgettable character.  I can’t call her bland because she was feisty and snarky, but she just wasn’t memorable.  Nothing super special about her; she's just like one of the other hundreds of YA characters floating around in my head. 

How about the love interest, you ask?

 B-Orion-g. (xD Not the best pun, but whateves.  It's still a pun.  Did I mention I love lame puns?)

Even though I did think the connection between him and Isadora’s stars was cute, he wasn’t a good character at all (development wise and romance wise). He was certainly caring, but he was so bland.  Ry was the typical nice guy, and that’s about all I can really say about his personality.  It was also really random to learn those things about Ry’s heritage, and it didn’t make any sense. Just out of the blue, we are told Ry was also the son of Greek gods.  How was this relevant?  I had suspected something was off with Ry- there wasn’t a lot of explanation about him in the beginning- but this was totally random. 

Now onto the plot iffies.

Let’s start with a personal favorite (NOT) of mine:

Insta-love

I’m sorry, but whenever there’s an insta-love involved, and the book is in first person, I’ve decided to assume the worst about the love interest.  (Love is blind, no?)  For all we know, Isadora could be hallucinating (she thinks Egyptian gods are her parents), and he was actually just a figment of her imagination.  After all, he was always staring off into space.  Maybe that was symbolic of her drawing a blank in her mind or something.  I dunno.

 Another plot iffie was the lack of explanation on why Isadora was human. (And Isadora being human was a HUGE thing in this book.) I mean, shouldn’t immortal god+ immortal goddess= immortal child?  That didn’t really compute with me, and as far as I know, this book was a stand alone, so no potential sequel to explain that.

To wrap this review up, it was a nice story- don’t get me wrong. But I’d gone into it expecting- and wanting- a fun and rowdy story about a girl who has to deal with a crazy family of immortal gods (there was a crazy-as in leaps in logic/randomness- and there were gods, but nothing in this book was fun nor rowdy).  Though I did enjoy the little blurbs in the beginning of each chapter talking about the Egyptian gods (as well as Isadora’s snarky little twist to it), I wish there was more Egyptian culture in the book.  I mean, yes Isadora was Egyptian and her family was made up of immortal gods, but that was the extent of Egyptian influence in this book. 

Happy Readings!:) 

Rating: 2.5 out of 5