Book Review: Onyx by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Published August 14th, 2012
Entangled Teen
366 pages (Paperback)

Being connected to Daemon Black sucks…

Thanks to his alien mojo, Daemon’s determined to prove what he feels for me is more than a product of our bizarro connection. So I’ve sworn him off, even though he’s running more hot than cold these days. But we’ve got bigger problems.

Something worse than the Arum has come to town…

The Department of Defense are here. If they ever find out what Daemon can do and that we're linked, I’m a goner. So is he. And there's this new boy in school who’s got a secret of his own. He knows what’s happened to me and he can help, but to do so, I have to lie to Daemon and stay away from him. Like that's possible. Against all common sense, I'm falling for Daemon. Hard.

But then everything changes…

I’ve seen someone who shouldn’t be alive. And I have to tell Daemon, even though I know he’s never going to stop searching until he gets the truth. What happened to his brother? Who betrayed him? And what does the DOD want from them—from me?

No one is who they seem. And not everyone will survive the lies… (From Goodreads)

Sweet alien babies!  This book was a rip-your-heart-out, smash-into-tiny-pieces, feed-to-a-wolverine painful, and I loved every minute of it!  Ms. Armentrout, you have done it again.

The character development was fantastic!  Katy is such a strong protagonist.  Not only is she taking the events of Obsidian better than anyone ever should, she takes her new powers and tries to protect Daemon.  She's gone from simple book review blogger to a blogger with crazy super alien powers that could end up being the death of her!  We saw a bit of her selfless heroine side at the end of Obsidian, and this only continued to grow in Onyx.  I'm going to predict it now, and say that she's going to really cross the selfless-to-the-point-of-stupid line in Opal.

Then there is Daemon.  Not gonna lie, I had an intense love for smartass, dickhead Daemon.  I knew Onyx would reveal a different, sweeter side of him.  I didn't expect just how much more I would love him.  Holy hot alien, Daemon is again ruining guys for me.  Like I hinted at in my Obsidian review, all he needs is leather pants and I'm done for.  Again, crazy good character development.  The depth of Daemon is growing, and I can't wait to see what happens to him and Katy in the next book.

The ending was EPIC, in the most torturous and painful way.  Although I pretty much had the ending figured out about one-fourth of the way through the book, all of the events that led up to it had me surprised and thrilled.  I think have just read Shadows gave me a lot of clues as to where this book was headed.  However, even though I guessed the ending, it still left me in shock.

Onyx was brilliant, heart-stopping writing that will go down as an all-time favourite of mine.  In two books and a novella, Jennifer L. Armentrout has created such a complex and realistic feeling world.  Her characters have captured my heart, and let that wolverine I mentioned before play with it a bit before he ripped it apart. And I loved every second of it.

Much love, Samantha
P.S. Shoutout to my roommate (Hi Phee!) who has devoured Obsidian and is now working on Onyx!