Review: Juliet Immortal

Juliet Immortal

By Stacey Jay

Publication date: August 9, 2011

My review:

Juliet and Romeo's tragic love story was made famous by Shakespeare's play. In this reimagining, Juliet was killed by Romeo in exchange for immortality. She too was granted immortality by the Ambassadors of Light to help them defeat Romeo and his masters in their quest to destroy love. For centuries, Juliet has been reborn to protect soul mates even as Romeo seeks to tear them apart and lead them to tragic ends. Now Juliet has fallen in love with one of the soul mates she is supposed to protect even as Romeo tries to convince her that the Ambassadors of Light aren't as pure of heart as they seem and that if she can love him again they will both be set free. 

Juliet Immortal has an interesting premise with the idea that Romeo is a villain. In this rebirth, Juliet is temporarily living the life of Ariel, a girl who was injured in a car accident while on a bad date. Romeo of course, takes over the corpse of the bad date. While running from Romeo, Juliet/Ariel is rescued by Ben. She finds him attractive but to her horror, it turns out that he is one of the people she is supposed to protect and his soul mate is Ariel's best friend Gemma.This forbidden love along with the battle between the Ambassadors of Light and Romeo's dark Mercenary masters makes up the main plot. There is a lot of mystery surrounding the Ambassadors of Light and the Mercenaries but the questions aren't all answered. It just seems to be a convenient plot device at times. 

Some of the characters are not exactly likeable at first. I did feel sorry for Ariel and I liked how Juliet was able to provide an outsider's perspective on Ariel's life and relationship with her mom and best friend. She also made things better for Ariel in a way. Juliet doesn't seem to have learned much from her past mistakes with Romeo. She quickly falls for Ben and at one point realizes that she has known Ben for less time than she knew Romeo before marrying him. What I did like about Juliet was how she tried to help people. She had quite a bit of unforgiveness in her heart towards Romeo which is understandable and made her a more realistic character. At first I couldn't stand Romeo but he turned out to have some unexpected good aspects to his character. Ben didn't have a lot of depth but he did remind me of Alex Fuentes from Perfect Chemistry and I did like his character and root for his relationship with Juliet. Gemma, the other major character, can be really horrible at times but then she also has some kindness in her. I liked that she was neither good or bad though she should have been a better friend to Ariel.

Overall I thought that Juliet Immortal was a creative idea and the chemistry between Ben and Juliet was good but the book fell a little short of the mark at times especially where the Ambassadors of Light/Mercenaries are concerned. I did find it to be a page turner and the descriptions kind of added to that feeling of suspense/horror. I also think the book ended well though one little twist was not unexpected to me. With its flaws it still offered some deeper ideas about friendship, family relationships, forgiveness, and love. Purist fans of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet might not like this but those who read the play and were not fans of Romeo might find it an enjoyable spin. The romance might also appeal to fans of Simone Elkeles. As far as retellings of Romeo and Juliet go, I prefer Saving Juliet by Suzanne Selfors. Juliet Immortal is a good book but it could have been a little better. 

Readalikes: Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles (because of the forbidden love and similarities between Alex Fuentes and Ben), Saving Juliet by Suzanne Selfors, Once a Witch by Carolyn MacCullough, Unearthly by Cynthia Hand (Unearthly is a much better book but there is a similarity in the way Juliet has a purpose in saving/helping people), The Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink

Note: I received an ARC of this book through the Amazon Vine program in exchange for an honest review