Review - Romeo Redeemed (Juliet Immortal #2) by Stacey Jay
Romeo Redeemed (Juliet Immortal #2)
by Stacey Jay
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Release Date: October 9th 2012
Genre: Young Adult, Romance, Fantasy, Retellings
Synopsis:
Seductive companion to the popular Juliet Immortal, in which former lovers—Romeo and Juliet—meet, not as true lovers, but truly as enemies.
Cursed to live out eternity in his rotted corpse, Romeo, known for his ruthless, cutthroat ways, is given the chance to redeem himself by traveling back in time to save the life of Ariel Dragland. Unbeknownst to her, Ariel is important to both the evil Mercenaries and the love-promoting Ambassadors and holds the fate of the world in her hands. Romeo must win her heart and make her believe in love, turning her away from her darker potential before his work is discovered by the Mercenaries. While his seduction begins as yet another lie, it soon becomes his only truth. Romeo vows to protect Ariel from harm, and do whatever it takes to win her heart and soul. But when Ariel is led to believe his love is a deception, she becomes vulnerable to Mercenary manipulation, and her own inner darkness may ultimately rip them apart.
If we fell in love with Juliet Immortal and thought of the book as unique, poetic and breathtaking, Romeo Redeemed is not far from the same praises.
We feel the need to mention that the writing was just as good as the first book and the Intermezzo in the story, made us think we were in a Shakespearian story, reminding us the essence of the origin of Romeo & Juliet.
We all remember the Romeo from Stacey Jay's story. Bad, immortal and dark Romeo. In an attempt to save Juliet from the the same as his, he killed her and now is rotting in live, literally. His punishment from the Dark Ambassadors was to feel the effects of decomposition and to wish he could die.
That punishment was totally fair. Romeo battled for 700 years with the Dark Ambassadors (Mercenaries), tempting lovers to kill each other, turning against one another, with the intention to recruit forces for the Dark side. Being immortal was not all a bed of roses. For all that time he has not been able to feel anything; no taste, no smell... no feelings at all. That is what being a Mercenary means. That and live always in corpses, because they are not like the Light Ambassadors, they do not send the soul of a person in the mist until the work is done. They must enter into the body of a freshly dead corpse. It would be understandable that those things can drive you mad, although the person deserve it or not.
Despite all his atrocities, he is surprised to see the Light Ambassador searching for him, a mere shriveled skeleton who is so rotted and damaged as his soul is. Astonishingly as it may seem, this Light Ambassador is Juliet's Nurse and wants to make a deal with Romeo so he can redeemed himself. The work he must do is make the girl he shot fall in love with him. How is that possible?
In Stacey Jay's world is parallel realities were one event may not have happened in another universe. All he has to do is accept and he would be in a reality were Juliet never inhabited Ariel's body, were he never shoot her in order to save Juliet from the Mercenary that create him and to make her fall in love with him, a dark and evil soul like him. But if he could make fall Juliet Capulet for him so many years ago, how difficult could be with this girl?
It seems easy for Romeo and he accepts it. He wants his redemption so badly that he would do whatever he needs to find it. He does not want to disappear into de mist forever without being heard nor seen. However, it is not as easy as he thought it would be. Ariel is angry with Dylan, the boy who Romeo is inhabiting, for the bet he did with his friend and swore to not trust him ever again.
Would Romeo be able to melt Ariel's wall again or would he return to his rotten self as punishment to not fulfill his duty? Would he find, finally, his desire redemption?
This story broke our little hearts. We see Romeo struggle to become to be a better person, to deserve forgiveness and he ends up loving a girl who may not see again. Never again. We were heartbroken to find out that Romeo was actually a good, old-fashion (in a good way!) and desperate boy who wanted, in the end, protect the only person more important for him than himself.
He have seen a cruel and adamant in let Juliet go and now we have the well-known romantic Romeo. We were surprised and also a little but ashamed by this, to read about Romeo/Dylan naked dance while singing a song from West Side Story. We could not believe what Ariel asked him to do and we could not stop thinking of what this new Romeo would do to achieve his goal. He dance naked on the road! Is not that romantic? We mean, he did anything Ariel asked to get to trust him again and to proof that he was not the same Dylan she once knew. Of course he wasn't! He was our heartbreaker Romeo Montague! We can officially say that we are know in love with Stacey Jay's Romeo.
We cannot say the same thing about our co-protagonist, Ariel Dragland. She is crazy! She is cute, shy and a good person, but in some situations she becomes a different person. She is easy to manipulate (not that is her fault, but still) and she is prepared to do whatever she feels in order to get her own justice. We did not get Ariel's behavior and we did not like it, either, but we have to recognize that without Ariel's craziness, she and Romeo may have not ever met.
Moreover, we hate the Mercenaries and we hate the Ambassadors. We started to hate them all in Juliet Immortal's book, but in this book they show her true nature. Both of them. The one who is supposed to be the "good ones", are not. Juliet's Light Ambassador, Nurse, is bad. She is the reason of all the trouble our Juliet is in and she had never had good intentions with our Romeo. Yes, Book Addicts, Juliet is also in this story. Another point we liked about this story is that Juliet was not left apart.
We think that this another marvellous story of Stacey Jay and it did justice to the first book. It not only explains the story of Romeo after Juliet leaving our world, but we also have the opportunity to know where Juliet has gone. This book is full of romance, craziness, action, full of sensibility and emotions that we would be filling in this website for a lifetime and we would never end. We truly recommend this book to you, Book Addicts. You would love it as much as we did!
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