Review : The Chaos of Stars by Kiersten White

Summary (from Goodreads) 

Title : The Chaos of Stars
Author : Kiersten White
Publication Date : September 10th 2013
Publisher : HarperTeen
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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.
 
Personal Thoughts

Although Kiersten White's previous novel, Mind Games, did not work for me at all, I still decided to give The Chaos of Stars a try because it has a stunning title, a gorgeous cover and a background brimming with potential. While the book started off with a lot of promise, it failed to live up to the maximum potential because of flaws in the characterization and the world-building.

The Chaos of Stars' main character, Isadora was not my favorite main character. Her personality was unlikable and her bitter attitude towards everything in life made it difficult to identify with her. Isadora is the human daughter of two immortal Egypt Gods. Because her parents refuse to make her immortal, she believes that they do not love her. Throughout the entire book, this was the main theme. Isadora whined and whined and whined about how her parents didn't love her and how she was forgettable. It got to the point where I seriously wanted to slap the girl a few times. It was clear that her parents were actually supportive of her and her mother constantly made sure that she was safe and sound, but because Isadora refused to get see beyond her judgmental and selfish views, she never saw the love that her parents cherished her with. What's worse was her perspective of love. Just because she refused to believe in love, she immediately made her opinions on those who actually believed in it. For instance, when she met her brother Sirius in San Diego after 15 or so years later and found out that he was married and his wife was expecting, she was literally disgusted. There were multiple instances like that where I just wanted her to shut up. In addition, she was so rude to Ry, the love interest and quite possibly one of the sweetest guy ever. She acted like a bitch with him because the guy was romantically interested in her. Only some of the secondary characters were fleshed out while the rest were uninteresting, bland and one-dimensional. However, I enjoyed the characters of Ry, Tyler and Scott. They were certainly the highlight of The Chaos of Stars.

The plot was non-existent. The major aspect of it only developed in the last 20 pages of the book and quite honestly, I thought it was a joke because of how silly the whole thing was. When you read a book based on Egyptian mythology, you expect some form of world-building. But not in The Chaos of Stars. Kiersten White failed to establish a rich and complex world. What we get as world-building is tons and tons of info-dump, which to me does not constitute of world-building. There were also multiple unanswered questions, some which I thought were critical to the story-line. I also had a gripe when it came to some of the humor used in the book. I thought that it was juvenile, insensitive and at times ridiculous. At one point in the book, Isadora compared love to cancer. That, in my opinion, was cold-hearted, callous and unnecessary. There was also some other story about her dad's penis, which I honestly don't have the energy to go and look up, because just mentioning it makes me cringe. I'll admit that the writing in The Chaos of Stars was thousand times better than the writing in Mind Games, but it still wasn't that enjoyable. It's a shame because I actually thought I was going to enjoy the book because it started off well. Despite my grievances with The Chaos of Stars, I did think there were some enjoyable elements to the book, namely the friendship between Ry, Tyler, Scott and Isadora. Unfortunately, even the sweet and fun moments between these friends weren't enough to compensate for its other faults. I think this is where my relationship with Kiersten White's books ends. Her books always are full of original ideas, but she fails to execute them to my liking.

From my review it might seem like The Chaos of Stars was an utter disaster, but it actually was not. It did have some entertaining scenes, but it could have been such an epic book had the issues I mentioned above not been present. While this might not have been my kind of book, do check out other reviews before deciding if you want to try it out or not.

Rating

Cover : 4/5
Plot : 2/5
Characters : 2/5
Writing : 3/5

**Overall Rating : 2.5/5**

 Thank you to Edelweiss and HarperTeen for the e-ARC of The Chaos of Stars.