Half Blood by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Rating : 4 / 5

Goodreads : The Hematoi descend from the unions of gods and mortals, and the children of two Hematoi-pure-bloods-have godlike powers. Children of Hematoi and mortals-well, not so much. Half-bloods only have two options: become trained Sentinels who hunt and kill daimons or become servants in the homes of the pures. Seventeen-year-old Alexandria would rather risk her life fighting than waste it scrubbing toilets, but she may end up slumming it anyway. There are several rules that students at the Covenant must follow. Alex has problems with them all, but especially rule #1:Relationships between pures and halfs are forbidden. Unfortunately, she's crushing hard on the totally hot pure-blood Aiden. But falling for Aiden isn't her biggest problem--staying alive long enough to graduate the Covenant and become a Sentinel is. If she fails in her duty, she faces a future worse than death or slavery: being turned into a daimon, and being hunted by Aiden. And that would kind of suck.

My review : This is going to be a mixed review. I don't really know how to rate this book because there was a lot of negative points sometimes according to me. I'm going to talk about them first.
I was really shocked by the similarities between Half Blood and the Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead. Some people liked these similarities others haven't read VA so there is no point to compare the two. I was really confused and embarrassed because there is too much things alike. Concerning the plot the beginning of Half Blood, the presentation of their society, some characters and some other things through the book were very much like in The Vampire Academy series. I was even surprised that the author was not accused of plagiarism... I know it seems very superficial to focus on that but it really bothered me when I was reading Half Blood. To name just a few : As i've just said the beginning at least the first 50 pages is similar. The heroine who ran away from her school where she was trained. She is brought back by people from this school including Aiden (just like Dimitri), she can stay at this school if she is trained by someone and again it's Aiden just like Dimitri. The characters and their relationship are a lot like in VA too. We have Alexandria and Aiden just like Rose and Dimitri. Deacon who can cope his issues only thanks to alcohol is a lot like Adrian. The daimons getting in group to hunt just like the strigois in Frostbite. The idea that the heroine is going to kill the one she loved just like in Blood Promise. But also the whole society of Hematoi, half blood, daimon reminded me of the moroi, damphir and strigoi too. I know similarities between books especially in YA are common but in Half Blood it was just too much...
About the other things that I didn't like was all the high school fight between characters. It was childish and cliché and I didn't care about it. I was also annoyed by some characters. For exemple Caleb. I know he is really loyal and brave at the end but according to me he is pretty useless. I liked the heroine Alexandria she is one of those strong kick ass heroine with very witty remarks sometimes but she annoyed me too. I know that the whole story evolves around the loss of her mother and its understandable that she reacts like that since she was close to her but there was too much of that in the book. I would have liked a little more plot around it but it's just the first book so hopefully there'll more actions in the following books...
This whole appolyon thing was a little predictable too and I figured it out quickly...
But I do enjoyed reading it and that's why I gave it 4 stars. I know that my review can seem really negative at that point but I liked reading Half Blood I read it pretty quickly and I was thinking about the story and its characters after reading it so that's a sign that it deserves at least 4 stars.
I liked the idea of the servants. It was shocking and gave me chills.
I also loved the whole greek mythology behind the story. I've always been a great fan of greek mythology. But I would have like to know more about it and the Gods. Since it's the first book I'm sure we're going to learn more about it in the other books. My favorite character is definitely Seth. He is really mysterious and for now we don't know much about his life but I can't wait to read Pure just for him. I guess that the reason why I loved this character is because this idea of Appolyon is really unique. It's an interesting idea and I can't wait to see how it'll be developed in Pure. I liked the romance part of the book between Alexandria and Aiden but I wasn't hooked.
I must confess that I thought I would like this book a lot more but I'm going to keep reading this series.