The Chaos of Stars by Kiersten WhitePublisher: HarperTeen
Published: September 10, 2013
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
My Thoughts:
I fell in love with Kiersten White's writing after reading Mind Games and you can imagine how thrilled I was after I found out she was writing a book about Egyptian mythology. I ended up having a love/hate relationship with this book though which I was not expecting.
The part I loved was the Egyptian mythology. I loved the little tidbits that were placed at the beginning of each chapter and I loved learning about Isadora's family. I am still fairly new to this mythology so it really captured my attention.
What I didn't love was all the high school drama. The romance and selfish tirades in the beginning of the book really turned me off. I really wasn't expecting Isadora to be so selfish and whiny. There were many times in the beginning of the book where I just wanted to reach in and slap her. From the way the book progressed though I am guessing the author wanted us to feel this way. I was hoping the main plot of the book would have been more involved with the mythology, but the main plot point in my opinion was Isadora growing up. And let me tell you she needed to grow up a lot. I get that she felt slighted and she was angry, but my goodness she was a whiny brat 3/4 of the book.
The addition of the Greek Gods through me for a loop. I won't give anything away but I just want to say that I am confused. I don't see where they all fit in together and why a certain character was brought in. I would have liked the story to maybe take the reader into more about this particular character and what it means to Isadora's family, but we are just left hanging. The story and characters all feel very incomplete in my opinion. Yes the mystery is solved, but not until the very end does this happen and honestly nothing exciting happened throughout the whole book until the end. If I had one wish I would have wished for the story to have started in the middle and then continued for about 6 chapters after what was supposed to be the ending. I think White hit her stride in the middle and I really wish it would have happened sooner.
The reason for my 3 star rating is because I really did enjoy the ending. It finally gave me the mythology I wanted and the scary Gods that I craved. I still enjoyed White's writing and even though I wasn't a fan of the overall storyline by the end I was hooked and can honestly say I wanted more.
3 snowflakes
