“How long have you known? Who have you told!?”
“No one!” I screamed. Dizzy and faint. ”I haven’t told anyone.”
For several seconds he stared at me, then his grip loosened. “I hope so for their sake.”- Onyx by Jennifer L. Armentrout
This is the second book of the Lux series and continues the story started in Obsidian written by Jennifer L. Armentrout. It was published 2012 by Entangled Teen is just like its predecessor a Supernatural YA with romance, hot boys and aliens.
The plot continues with Katy refusing to date Daemon and starting to develop supernatural powers. Mostly slamming doors in her own face without touching them. But the intrigued thickens when a secret from the past are revealed and Katy start to question who she can trust as everyone seem to have a dark secret.
The cast of characters are mostly the same with Katy being the lead and Daemon being the romantic interest. We have Dee, the best friend of Katy and sister of Daemon who is barely in this book, and the rival Ash is… There. I fairly sure that her sentences were under count of 10. There is a new character though, several but most are just villain characters in the background. His name is Blake and he is a hot surfer with dark secret. I don’t think I have to elaborate what is part of the story is. What did this book need more of? Drama!
Frankly, this book hasn’t much of anything in plot and characters. This book feels like a bridge between book 1 and 3. I feel that it hasn’t much of a story by itself. At least not around 80% of the book. The first at least three fourth of the book was just about Katy shouting that what Daemon and she felt isn’t real and trying to date someone else while fantasizing about banging Daemon. There is also a very long training montage, covering several chapters. Then at the end of the book, the mystery shows up and reveal itself and suddenly the plot is on track making me wonder if the writer didn’t know what to do in this book and just wrote it because the first book became a hit.
It was also what I felt when I looked at the characters. Most of them was strangely different from the first book. Katy has become dumb and shy, while in the first one she was sharp and sassy. Flicking people of and being stubborn. She was stubborn here but more out of stupidity. Daemon made a one sixty turn and become charming and kind instead of sassy and an asshole. Apparently, being raised to fight and his brother death vanished when he saw a cute ass. Dee suddenly fell in love in Adam, the guy she called her brother in last book because they had sex and the writer tried to turn Ash into a friend instead of a rival.
The greatest problem I had was Katy’s stupidity. It made me cringe again and again. I kept yelling why? She was nearly killed several times by a character but did not tell Daimon. Why? Because he has so much on his plate. She keeps missing obvious hints of bad guys and why they are bad. She spends most of the book acting dumb like a brick for the plot. In order to make the story go forward, the author uses a very old trick that has turned into a trope by now. Making the main character dumb enough to enter all the obvious traps. I personally know that this is very easy to do but it is according to me bad writing.
Though, to be fair. The self-pity that haunts Katy the entire books, take a drink every time she says it’s her fault, is very accurate for a teenage girl. What should be conceived as guilt just falls under her being self-centered. She makes everything about her and as someone who wasn’t like that when I was in that age, let’s just say it’s very hard to read about.
It doesn’t really think that is what the writer wanted the reader to feel about Katy, but you have to be careful with making a character constantly feeling like it is their fault even when it clearly isn’t. It often comes across after a while for a cry of attention. I mean Daemon was feeling down in one chapter for something he had done and Katy’s response was it was my fault. No, it wasn’t and this is about Daemon not you…
As you can tell, I did not take a shine to this book. It just felt worse compared to the first one. It was clearly of lesser quality. This one was predictable and annoying because of it. None of the character seem to figure out the obvious. The plot felt messy or just not thought out well. I cannot tell you why as I don’t know the background of this book but I would think this one was written with the velocity of speed without much thought.
Is it entertaining? I would say no, not compare to the first book, but many seemed to disagree. Being loyal enough to the original book to ignore this one’s flaws or maybe love is just blind. Either way, if you enjoyed the first book enough then you might like this one but I did not and I will have a hard time recommend this one other than if you want to read the whole series.
I would give this a 5 out of 10, I would have given it even lower but I don’t think it was horrible. Just a disappointment compared to the first book. It had some bad writing mistakes such as the badly written characters and the lack of plot that didn’t just include teenage drama and stupidity. But I will be satisfied to lower it by 4 points from the first book to an average 5 rating.
With Kind Regards
Senefer.
Read with Senefer 