Title: Juliet Immortal by Stacey Jay (Juliet Immortal #1)

Format: ebook

Published:  August 9, 2011

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy,

Synopsis (from Goodreads): The most tragic love story in history . . .

Juliet Capulet didn’t take her own life. She was murdered by the person she trusted most, her new husband, Romeo Montague, a sacrifice made to ensure his own immortality. But what Romeo didn’t anticipate was that Juliet would be granted eternity, as well, and would become an agent for the Ambassadors of Light. For 700 years, she’s fought Romeo for the souls of true lovers, struggling to preserve romantic love and the lives of the innocent. Until the day she meets someone she’s forbidden to love, and Romeo, oh Romeo, will do everything in his power to destroy that love.

“These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume.”
—Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Review: 

I was one of those people who have never liked the traditional story of Romeo and Juliet. I remember disagreeing with my high school English teacher over Shakespeare’s play and not doing very well in the assessment of that unit.

So when I saw this book and read the tagline, “The Greatest Love Story Ever Told is a Lie“, I knew this was a book I wanted to read.

After tragically dying over seven hundred years ago, Juliet Capulet became an Ambassador for the Light. Fighting Romeo, an Mercenary for the Dark, on the side of soul mates and true love, her afterlife has followed a certain pattern. Coming down to Earth and inhabiting someone’s body for a short amount of time whilst she tries to save the soul mates from the fate Romeo forced upon her back in the tomb in Verona.

But this time, after inhabiting Ariel Dragland’s body, Juliet knows almost instantly that things are different. Romeo has found her straight away and she’s unable to contact Nurse for assistance with this latest pair of lovers.

With Romeo not giving up and Juliet finding herself having compromising feelings for one of the souls she’s been assigned to protect, will she be able to save this pair of soul mates from the side of the Mercenaries?

I really enjoyed this book. It had a very strong beginning. Ariel just finding out that Dylan – her date – was only on a date with her to win a bet with his friends and then she tries to kill the both of them… She’s a very interesting character who we only saw glimpses of as Juliet was in her body and we didn’t see much of her per say. I liked how Juliet tried to make her life better for when Ariel would come back into her body – things like trying to fix Ariel’s relationship with her mother.

The car-jacking scene amused me greatly. I liked Ben’s character from the start. He’s very much the white knight saving the damsel in distress who was just slightly too nice a guy for his own good. But he was a fantastic rival for Romeo.

And Romeo? It’s no secret that I’m a fan of villains and I enjoyed Romeo’s plight. It can’t be easy being the bad guy and living in the corpses of rotting flesh but he manages to be bad and somehow likeable at the same time. I liked his flirting with Juliet and his pushing of other characters’ buttons.

The best part of this book? The ending. I loved how everything tied up and the conclusions. I don’t want to spoil anything except to say that everything that lead up to the ending was well worth it.

The next book in this series is called Romeo Redeemed and from the ending in this story, it promises to be a good one. I can’t wait to see how it unfolds.

Rating: 

4 out of 5

Purchase book at:

Book Depository (hardcover) / Amazon (kindle version) / FishPond (hardcover)