Opal (Lux #3) : Review

Opal by Jennifer L. Armentrout

My rating: ★★★½

No one is like Daemon Black.
When he set out to prove his feelings for me, he wasn’t fooling around. Doubting him isn’t something I’ll do again, and now that we’ve made it through the rough patches, well... There’s a lot of spontaneous combustion going on.
But even he can’t protect his family from the danger of trying to free those they love.
After everything, I’m no longer the same Katy. I’m different... And I’m not sure what that will mean in the end. When each step we take in discovering the truth puts us in the path of the secret organization responsible for torturing and testing hybrids, the more I realize there is no end to what I’m capable of. The death of someone close still lingers, help comes from the most unlikely source, and friends will become the deadliest of enemies, but we won’t turn back. Even if the outcome will shatter our worlds forever.
Together we’re stronger... and they know it.

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This book was closer to the first book than the second book was. I think Obsidian just set my standards so high that Onyx just seemed okay to me though it was not a bad book at all. Opal, on the other had, was much closer to meeting those standards. 

Katy is feeling all this guilt and is constantly being reminded of how much her life has changed since she came to West Virginia(?). Daemon and Katy are finally in a full fledged, official relationship and we get to see much more of Daemon's softer side. (Worry not, he is still just as cocky and just as much of a bad boy as before. He just happens to express his love a little more... hey, that rhymed!)Did I mention Blake is back? He was as annoying and unwanted as he was at the end of Onyx, actually, maybe even more so. Scratch that. Definitely more so. There was just something always off about him and that creeper move he was pulling was just ick! At the very end, I honestly felt like throwing my kindle at the wall or at least banging it against something really hard. Not because I don't like my kindle. I love my kindle. I was just so pissed at Blake though and I needed a way to release that agression and my kindle happened to be in my hands. (Thankfully, I held off on that venting process so my baby is safe and sound.)

Now let's talk about the not so great parts. Similar to Onyx, I felt like this book dragged on at parts. I was waiting for the story to move and... well... this is how it goes: It starts off with the story progressing slowly and then it kind of flat lines where nothing is really happening to move the plot forward and then it suddenly shoots up with a steep slope around half way when a lot happens all of a sudden, then it pretty much flat lines again with only some minor progressions until it gets to the very ending when we reach the climax. Yes, I did a bit of skimming through on the flat line parts because this:

The other major thing I didn't like so much was that the book mainly focuses on Katy and Daemon's relationship. It's like Katy has ignored pretty much everyone else in her life now that she has a boyfriend which seemed weird since she kept thinking about her relationship with Dee and her mom and even Lesa and Carissa. She thought about it but she didn't really do much about it. All the other relationships in Katy's life take a back seat and her relationship with Daemon is placed front and center. You would think, then, that this relationship would then see a lot of development but it didn't really. It wasn't completely static. They did develop and reach some major milestones but it wasn't all that different from the beginning to the end. Maybe they just became a bit more expressive.

Also, I really wanted to know more about Dawson and what he's like but this also took a back seat to Daemon. Initially, Katy seems to be developing some kind of relationship with Dawson and plays a big part and helping him readjust to life now that he's back but then that completely fizzles out. After the half way point, it's almost like it never happened.

The good news is that the ending might just make up for all the faults. Maybe. It was a cliff hanger and my heart broke a little bit and a part of me is too scared to read the Origin (Lux#4) because I'm dreading what might happen next.

Maybe I've just set really high expectations for this book or maybe I'm just being too critical. Overall, I did enjoy the book and was not disappointed in it (this is always important in a series).