Juliet by Anne Fortier

This book starts with a neat premise: the descendants of Romeo and Juliet are still around and still trying to break the star-crossed part of their ancestors' love affair. And at times, the story works well in the mode of present-day characters living a story while trying to untangle the past sort of way (a mode employed to great success in A.S. Byatt's Possession and in Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian). It's hard for me to pinpoint exactly how this story falls apart--at times it just seems to clunk or thud when it should ring. At times it's the curse part, and at times it's the characters' motivations, and at times it's the way the characters act like they have Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in their bones, but it was hard for me to stay entirely immersed in the world of the story without stopping from time to time and thinking, does the author really expect me to buy that. But, all in all, it was an enjoyable story.