Still Star-Crossed, Melinda Taub

Still Star-Crossed, Melinda Taub
ISBN: 9780385743501
Read November 24, 2013

YA: "sequel" to Romeo and Juliet, in Shakespearean English, in the style of Much Ado About Nothing.

Confession time: I didn't ever get to be a typical teenager.  Crap went down in my life starting around age 10, and pretty much that whole next decade was a total write-off.  So I have to admit that I've always been slightly amused and bemused by Romeo and Juliet - I never got to have that sort of experience in my own life, and I couldn't understand how they could be so stupid and so passionate while they were so young and naive.  Even now, having had boyfriends and a husband, I still don't understand that very particular type of passionate teen crush.  Because of that, Romeo and Juliet is one of my least-favorite plays.  Now, that said, I love Shakespeare with a passion, so even my least-favorite play isn't bad, I just never really sympathized with the protagonists.

So I was a bit trepidatious when this one came across my desk.  "Oh God," I thought, "it wasn't messy and passionate and stupid enough, here's round two!"  But, reader, I was WRONG.

Oh yeah, it is a sequel, and it does deal with Benvolio and Rosaline, Montague and Capulet, but it's much more a comedy of errors than a tragedy.  Now, don't get me wrong, people are going to die, but that's pretty much a given in a Shakespeare play anyway.

It's written in novel form, in beautiful formal English (soooo wonderful to see in a YA book, you can't even imagine) and the characters are perfectly matched against each other.  There's madness and ambition and love and snarky comebacks and it really is pretty much perfect.  Very Princess Bride.  Almost enough to make me like Romeo and Juliet itself just a little bit more.