Obsidian, Onyx, and Opal, by Jennifer Armentrout

After writing about the upcoming film adaptation of Jennifer Armentrout's sexy-aliens-in-peril Lux series, I requested the first three installments—Obsidian, Onyx, and Opal—from my local library. The books' mega-cheesy cover art was off-putting, but I was hoping the story would deliver some enjoyably soapy Roswell-style goodness.

Armentrout's heroine is a sweet, saucer-eyed seventeen-year-old named Katy, the newest resident of a small West Virginia town. When Katy meets her perpetually shirtless next door neighbor Daemon Black, her appreciation of his world-class abs is ruined by his overt rudeness, which includes several warnings to end her budding friendship with his twin sister Dee. Katy is determined to ignore Daemon (despite the abs), but she's intrigued by the local residents' inexplicable aversion to the Black siblings, the odd weather and light phenomena that happens around them, or the menacing, shadowy figures who trail in their wake.

I had one huge, insurmountable problem with these books. The vast majority of the hero and heroine's interactions go more or less like this:

Hero: You should do as I say, because I love you. Also, I am a man, and therefore know what is best.

Heroine: No! I am my own person, and I will prove it by either rushing off into danger and/or withholding vital information from you!

SERIOUSLY. THIS HAPPENS OVER AND OVER. What kind of message am I supposed to take away from that? That trying to be independent makes girls stupid? Because that's what was suggested by Katy's consistently disastrous attempts at getting involved with the action, and I found it incredibly irritating. Armentrout's series might work as brain-dead beach-reading for, like, Twilight fans, but “Listen to your bossy, controlling boyfriends, girls!” is hardly the kind of thing I can recommend to any impressionable young readers.