DREAMLESS by Josephine Angelini

Dreamless
Josephine Angelini

A big thank you to ARCycling for this book!

Rating: B-
Synopsis:

Can true love be forgotten?

As the only scion who can descend into the Underworld, Helen Hamilton has been given a nearly impossible task. By night she wanders through Hades, trying to stop the endless cycle of revenge that has cursed her family. By day she struggles to overcome the fatigue that is rapidly eroding her sanity. Without Lucas by her side, Helen is not sure she has the strength to go on.

Just as Helen is pushed to her breaking point, a mysterious new Scion comes to her rescue. Funny and brave, Orion shields her from the dangers of the Underworld. But time is running out—a ruthless foe plots against them, and the Furies' cry for blood is growing louder.

As the ancient Greek world collides with the mortal one, Helen's sheltered life on Nantucket descends into chaos. But the hardest task of all will be forgetting Lucas Delos.

Josephine Angelini's compelling saga becomes ever more intricate and spellbinding as an unforgettable love triangle emerges and the eternal cycle of revenge intensifies. Eagerly awaited, this sequel to the internationally bestselling Starcrossed delivers a gritty, action-packed love story that exceeds all expectations.

This review contains spoilers for Starcrossed. Do not click read more unless you've read the first book in the series!

My thoughts on the book:

I was slightly disappointed with Dreamless. I could not get into it. Starcrossed blew me away, and I could not wait to get my hands on the next novel in this series. However, Dreamless fell flat for me. 

Helen and Lucas were separated at the end of Starcrossed because they are cousins. So what does Helen do? Spend the entire book pining away after Lucas. Oh sure, she met Orion, then she loved him, too. But she still wanted to bang her cousin. I was hoping this would have been handled differently and without a love triangle, honestly. I hoped that they'd find out that Helen's mom is a big liar and that they weren't really cousins. Then they could live happily ever after. But nope! I know Cassandra Clare played with this idea some in the Mortal Instruments series, but she just did it much better than Angelini did. The way Clare handled everything made it seem like it was unnatural for Clary and Jace to be apart. This was handled in a way that made it seem unnatural for Lucas and Helen to be together. 

I did love Orion, though. I was hoping that Helen would quit running for emo child of the year and decide she wanted to be with him instead. Lucas was annoying in this book. I didn't like him at all. He was all broody and bratty. Orion was great. He was the main source of entertainment for the book. 

Also, the book just jumped around too much. It was third person limited, but it switched POVs constantly. I could keep up because it stated who the narrator was following, but it was annoying. Every time I'd get into what was happening to one character, it'd switch. Usually, I'd get frustrated and put the book down. Because of that, it took me FOREVER to finish this book. 

Additionally, I felt that things were dragged out too long. Sure, there was a lot of action, and I know I should have cared more what happened during these action scenes... especially since I loved the first book so much, but I just didn't like the characters that much (outside of Orion) in this novel. Therefore, all of the action and suspense was wasted on me. Furthermore, the characters tried to be funny a lot and they just weren't. There were many places where a character would say something not-funny-at-all and then the other character would just die laughing. I sat there like, "um why are you laughing? THIS IS NOT FUNNY!" I'm assuming these were attempts at humor, but they were not successful. 

Other than Orion, the one shining part of this novel was Angelini's writing. She has a way of describing things that makes you feel like you're there. She also words things very gracefully. Because of her ability to write, I have hopes that book three in the series will be much better than this one.

I didn't hate this book, but I just liked it okay. I mostly talked about what I didn't like because I feel that the good stuff has already been mentioned, and the negative things would make me check this book out from the library first instead of buying it outright. Do I recommend this book? Absolutely. Anyone who read Starcrossed has to read this book. Also, if you haven't read Starcrossed and want a good mythology series that deals with Helen of Troy, then you should start the series. Will I continue this series? Most definitely. While Dreamless wasn't my favorite book, and I feel that Angelini had a bit of a sophmore slump issue with this novel, I have faith that the third book in the series will blow my mind. A lot of things have been introduced, but the novel didn't end on a cliffhanger. The ending did, however, make you curious to see what happens next. I can't wait to see how it plays out. 

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