Review: Deity by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Official Synopsis:

"History is on repeat, and things didn't go so well the last time. "

Alexandria isn't sure she's going to make it to her eighteenth birthday--to her Awakening. A long-forgotten, fanatical order is out to kill her, and if the Council ever discovers what she did in the Catskills, she's a goner... and so is Aiden. 

If that's not freaky enough, whenever Alex and Seth spend time "training"--which really is just Seth's code word for some up-close and personal one-on-one time--she ends up with another mark of the Apollyon, which brings her one step closer to Awakening ahead of schedule. Awesome. 

But as her birthday draws near, her entire world shatters with a startling revelation and she's caught between love and Fate. One will do anything to protect her. One has been lying to her since the beginning. Once the gods have revealed themselves, unleashing their wrath, lives will be irrevocably changed... and destroyed. 

Those left standing will discover if love is truly greater than Fate...

Pages: 330

Published by: Spencer Hill Press (November 6, 2012)

Genre: YA paranormal mythology + romance

My rating for Deity (Covenant, #3):

All I have to say are two words:

Team Aiden!!!!!

Yes, that sums up my thoughts quite nicely.

If you've read my other reviews for this series, then you know what I think about this series and all my past opinions remain the same for Deity: the mythology is sweet, the action is present, the characters are wonderful and intriguing, but also funny. The pacing of the plot, the romance, the evil, the action was all perfect and it kept me wanting more. Those elements have stayed the same throughout the series so here's what's different about the characters and story.

Aiden and Seth took some big leaps to change in this novel. The closer Alex got to her eighteenth birthday, the more Seth's behavior changed. Seth really shocked me in Deity because I was not expecting him to be the way he ended up. I was really liking Seth in Pure, but he really took a toll for the worse in this one. He was a bit of a plot twist for sure. In contrast, the choices my dear Aiden made in this one made me leap for joy, thank the heavens, sing Hallelujah, pumped my fist in the air, do a victory dance...you get the picture. I LOVE Aiden! 

“That simple act stole my breath, my heart. But even as he pulled away, I realized that he couldn't steal something he already had.” 

Alex got herself in the same amount of trouble she always did, but this was the last component of the series before the big BOOM! More questions are formed in this book and it was kind of like "the suspense" of the series. As everyone knows just from the title of the fourth book, Apollyon, Alex was now the Apollyon and that's when the major stuff begins. Deity was like the brewing and bubbling of the stew, all the last things that had to happen before Alex became the Apollyon happened here. It ended so climactically--I cannot wait for Apollyon!

Recommended to readers who like: YA, greek mythology, romance, love triangles, suspense.

Sexual content: medium (love scene, but very very mild on the description)

~

Links to my reviews for other Jennifer L. Armentrout books:

Obsidian (Lux, #1)

Onyx (Lux, #2)

Half-Blood (Covenant, #1)

Daimon (Covenant, #0.5)

Pure (Covenant, #2)

Top Ten Tuesday #2: Favorite Book Covers...

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. You can find more TTT lists from book lovers and bloggers by clicking their blog name. 

This week's topic:
Top Ten Favorite Book Covers Of Books I've Read

To my displeasure, I realize I have yet to read the books with covers I find lovely/awesome/beautiful/my-favorite-cover-ever so making this list was kind of hard, but I wanted to do it anyway because next week I'm going to be showing you my Top Ten Favorite Book Covers of Books I Want to Read and this will be kind of cool to compare the two! I'd love to read in the comments what your personal favorite covers are!

#1 Hopeless: You're crazy if you don't think this is stunning! I fell in love with the self-pub'd cover (left) and then fell in love again with the Atria pub' cover (right)! And the back cover of the self-pub'd? Ahhh me lovesss! I'm so happy I own both copies!

Half-Blood: It's just so mesmerizing! The flower of light (technically, it's smoke) flows like fire or water...it's just so pretty!! And I love hibiscus(es?)! (what's the plural for that?)


#3: Pure: This one is more smokey than Half-Blood, but still pretty.

#4: New Moon: You can see I like flower covers, yeah? And the contrasting colors are stunning!

#5: My Life Next Door: It's sweet :)

#6: Tiger's Curse: I love this book and the cover is just such a powerful one. Ren consumes the entire cover!

#7: Fallen: I think this is super pretty, in a dark way. And I like blue :)

#8: North of Beautiful & Evermore: I just really like these because it's the same girl, the same picture, but flipped and edited :) I don't remember which book I read first, but when I picked up the second book, I had thought "Hey! Haven't I seen this already?" P.S. I recommend North of Beautiful! It has such a lovely message!

#9: Halo: I just like the light between their silhouettes. :)

#10: Wither: I thought it was cool that the cover designer added the pedigree lines to it!

Novella Review: Daimon by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Official Summary: 

"Love in my world usually ended up with someone hearing 'I smite thee ' as she was cursed to be some lame flower for the rest of her life." For three years, Alexandria has lived among mortals--pretending to be like them and trying to forget the duty she'd been trained to fulfill as a child of a mortal and a demigod. At seventeen, she's pretty much accepted that she's a freak by mortal standards... and that she'll never be prepared for that duty. According to her mother, that's a good thing.But as every descendant of the gods knows, Fate has a way of rearing her ugly head. A horrifying attack forces Alex to flee Miami and try to find her way back to the very place her mother had warned her she should never return-the Covenant. Every step that brings her closer to safety is one more step toward death... because she's being hunted by the very creatures she'd once trained to kill. The daimons have found her.

Genre: YA mythology + action

My rating for Daimon, (Covenant, #0.5):

This was a super quick prequel novella (62 pages!), but a worthy one. 

**Before I continue with the review, I'd like to note that you should read this prequel AFTER you read Half-Blood otherwise you will be submerged into a world you don't fully understand yet. It'll make more sense if you read this after and you will be able to appreciate it more.

Daimon is a short telling of what life was like for Alex after she escaped the Covenant with her mom and I really enjoyed it for that purpose. Sure we knew from Half-Blood that Alex and her mom had to move around a lot to keep the Covenant from following them; we knew that Alex found her mom killed by a daimon; we knew that Alex had to fight and kill a daimon. But we didn't really KNOW what that was like. 

We could guess and imagine and sympathize with Alex, but that's about it. This prequel novella paints the picture of what it was like for Alex. We learn how she has to deal with moving around a lot, how she found her mom, and what the aftermath was like for her. That probably shocked me the most just because it really dawned on me: Alex found her mother dead in their house. The only person she had left... she found cold and dead on the floor.

I never thought much about how she would have handled and mourned her mother's death, but Daimon shows exactly how that happened.

Daimon goes right up to the beginning of Half-Blood so it's like a pre-extension of Half-Blood and I liked that aspect too. After reading it, I felt like I knew and understood Alex more because of the greater insight this prequel novella provided.

~

Apart from the Covenant series, Jennifer L. Armentrout has another series called the Lux series, a couple stand-alone novels, and she recently began writing new adult novels under the name J. Lynn. I've already reviewed Obsidian (Lux #1) and Half-Blood (Covenant #1) if you'd like to see if they sound like something you'd read. Find out more about Armentrout and her books on her website, Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads! 

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