A Temptation of Angels by Michelle Zink

Title: A Temptation of Angels
Author: Michelle Zink
Publisher: Dial Book for Young Readers
Release Date: March 20, 2012
Pages: 435 pages (hardcover)
How I Got the Book: Bought it.
Purchase/Pre-order: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository
Promotional Materials and More: book trailer | author website

Even angels make mistakes in this page-turning epic romance.

When her parents are murdered before her eyes, sixteen-year-old Helen Cartwright finds herself launched into an underground London where a mysterious organization called the Dictata controls the balance of good and evil. Helen learns that she is one of three remaining angelic descendants charged with protecting the world's past, present, and future. Unbeknownst to her, she has been trained her whole life to accept this responsibility. Now, as she finds herself torn between the angelic brothers protecting her and the devastatingly handsome childhood friend who wants to destroy her, she must prepare to be brave, to be hunted, and above all to be strong, because temptation will be hard to resist, even for an angel.

Michelle Zink masterfully weaves historical fantasy with paranormal romance to create a gripping tale of love and betrayal.

Review:

New rule: I will immediately say no to any novels with a mention of a love triangle in the jacket copy from this day forth. The only way I shall reconsider a novel is if trusted friends heap praise upon it (which is what pushed me to read the magnificent Unearthly by Cynthia Hand despite love triangle presence in the jacket copy) or if I've already started the series and may as well finish it. Why am I making this rule now? The misses far outnumber the hits and after coming off one novel with an irritating love triangle, rebounding with A Temptation of Angels was not a good idea. A lack of tension, stock characters, and a heroine whose split affections annoyed me sunk a promising novel.

Zink's writing style has a Dramatic flair to it, one I enjoyed and loved no matter how much the content of the story annoyed me. It was wordier than most prose, but it was just enough to give it a deliciously formal feel. It it had been much more, I would have called it purple and become more irritated than I already was.

The world of Keepers, descendants of the original angels assigned to guard Earth, and the Legion (demons and such; Lucifer leads them) was of great interest to me and I was sad to see it wasn't expanded on very much. The way Keepers were trained as children for their lifelong duty with games like Find the Way Out and other such little things that made sense once they knew the truth impressed me. If I had to pick something out, I'd say that was the best detail of the novel.

For all the good ideas and Dramatic prose A Temptation of Angels has to offer, there isn't much else I like about it. The characters are flat and uninteresting, stock at best; I couldn't have cared less if everyone died during the climactic scene. On that topic, with thirty pages left in the novel and the book entrenched in its climactic scene, I found myself unable to care about anything. I could have put the book down and never picked it up again and I wouldn't have had one problem with leaving it unfinished so close to the end. Uneven pacing had me hooked for the first one-hundred pages of the novel, but the next two-hundred or so bored me before it got back on track.

As I'm sure you figured out if you read my personal rule above, I don't like love triangles. I like them even less when one of the love interests has wronged the heroine pretty badly (like, say, giving the order to have her parents killed by burning to death in their home) and she falls in love with him anyway. I'm sorry, but... You know what? I'm not sorry. That disgusts me on a pretty deep level. "He killed my parents, but I'm going to fall in love with him!" Really? It reminds me of a series by another author where one of the heroine's love interests was a guy who kidnapped and tortured her twice. Ick ick ick!

And on another note, one of my greater pet peeves in a novel? When an author gives a character a Russian last name such as Baranova but does not follow the system that comes with Russian surnames, which makes the spelling change with a person's gender. A male in that family would be a Baranov; a female in that family would be a Baranova. Andrei and Raum Baranova are not female, so their surnames should be Baranov.

So yeah, I'm going to start following my new personal rule. Like, right now. Right? (Oh please, let me follow the rule this time unlike the last time I instituted it! I don't want to keep putting myself through the pain!)

2 stars!

What am I reading next?: When the Sea is Rising Red by Cat Hellisen

The Space Between by Brenna Yovanoff

Title: The Space Between
Author: Brenna Yovanoff
Publisher: Razorbill
Release Date: November 14, 2011
Pages: 365 pages (hardcover)
How I Got the Book: Bought it.
Purchase/Pre-order: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository
Promotional Materials and More: book trailer | author website

Everything burns in Pandemonium...

...a city in Hell made of chrome and steel, where there is no future and life is an expense of frozen time. That's where Daphne lives.

The daughter of a demon and a fallen angel, she wonders what lies in store for her. Will she become a soulless demon like her sisters? Or follow in the footsteps of her brother Obie, whose life is devoted to saving lost souls on Earth? All she wants is to find a place where she belongs.

When Obie saves a bleeding, broken boy named Truman from the brink of death and then suddenly goes missing, Daphne runs away to Earth to find him. But on Earth, everything is colder and more terrifying, and Daphne struggles between her demon instincts and her growing--yet achingly unfamiliar--feelings for Truman. As Daphne and Truman search for Obie, they must navigate the jealousies and alliances of the violent archangels who stand in their way. But Daphne also discovers, unexpectedly, what it means to love and be human in a world where human is the hardest thing to be.

The Space Between is a breathtaking and transcendent new novel about a demon girl's search for love on Earth, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Replacement.

Review:

Books that give me ideas for my own books are my very best friends. Books that give me an awesome idea like a contemporary YA retelling of Lilith's myth in just thirteen pages? I expected to fall so deeply in love with The Space Between that I would forge us a marriage license. Though Yovanoff's prose entranced me and her characters made my heart ache, I didn't love this book nearly as much as I should have, and that's a crying shame.

Adorable is the last thing one would think to use when describing a demon, but that word fits Daphne perfectly. I wouldn't want to screw around with her if I saw her on the street, but her quiet sort of steel --I hope that isn't a pun--is contrasted with her straightforward, somewhat naive approach to the human world (which is understandable, considering this is the first time she's been out of Pandemonium and what she knows about the human world comes to her through media). Following her on her quest to find her brother was great fun and I never doubted for a moment that she really loved her brother.

Her relationship with her love interest Truman developed slowly and I think this was . The way I saw it, their relationship is what authors guilty of insta-love were going for and failed at achieving. They have a fascination with one another at the beginning, true, yet it makes sense given the circumstances. A little bit of that fascination is still there when they see each other again roughly a year later, but the way they fall is natural. The climactic scene between them is one I can see myself rereading a few times. It was so sweet!

However, my greatest complaint is that the novel is so poorly paced. All the lovely descriptions, perfect book jackets, and well-defined characters in the world can't make up for that. I spent more than half the novel bored out of my mind and waiting for some developing in the Obie-is-missing-and-in-trouble plotline. I wish a little more time could have been spent in Pandemonium with Lilith, whose great characterization made me swoon the few times she came around, and all the other demons in the steel city within Hell. The great Lucifer himself made one appearance. Just one, and it didn't give me the kind of insight into his character I wanted.

Yovanoff's novel impressed me a good deal more in the second half than in the first, and that's part of the reason why I decided to keep it when my original intent was to get rid of it after I read it Besides, if I ever get around to writing that idea the novel gave me, I'll want The Space Between around. Now then, to figure out how to translate all the pieces of Lilith's myth, from God to her ability to look through mirrors to her children and beyond, into a contemporary YA setting. This will be fun (and I say that without an ounce of sarcasm).

3 stars! (More like 3.5 stars.)

What am I reading next?: Dark Companion by Marta Acosta

Dark Kiss by Michelle Rowen

Title: Dark Kiss
Author: Michelle Rowen
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Release Date: May 22, 2012
Pages: 348 pages (paperback)
How I Got the Book: ARC from the publisher through NetGalley
Purchase/Pre-order: Amazon; Barnes & Noble; Book Depository
 
I don’t do dangerous.


Smart, uber-careful, ordinary Samantha – that’s me. But I just couldn’t pass up a surprise kiss from my number-one unattainable crush. A kiss that did something to me – something strange. Now I feel hungry all the time, but not for food. It’s like part of me is missing – and I don’t know if I can get it back.

Then there’s Bishop. At first I thought he was just a street kid, but the secrets he’s keeping are as intense as his unearthly blue eyes. If he’s what I think he is, he may be the only one who can help me. But something terrifying is closing in, and the one chance Bishop and I have to stop it means losing everything I ever wanted and embracing the darkness inside me.

Review:

Sometimes, I read a book and think it's so hilarious that I'm laughing every few pages and feel genuinely entertained. Sounds like the sign of a good novel, right? Good ones make you really feel and make you laugh or cry, not just snort or tear up. Yeah, that's until I realize I'm not supposed to be laughing because the novel is dead serious. Dark Kiss and my experience with it is best defined as a continuous cycle of those moments that never get any less awkward.

Rowen had a fantastic idea--not necessarily original, but a fine one nonetheless. She could have gone so many places with it and at times, I saw just how great it could have been; though it was shallow, the exploration of how problematic Heaven and Hell's methods of dealing with problems like the Source impressed me. The climax had me glued to the book and offered close to the main storyline of the novel while putting out some very shiny hooks for the next book.

That's pretty much all I can praise I can offer it. The characters and their relationships are poorly developed; Samantha and Bishop's romantic connection starts as insta-love taken to an almost frightening extreme and never gets any stronger. Some tantalizing bits about how Kraven, a demon assigned to the same mission, and Bishop knew each other when they were human are dropped and I don't feel enough is given for it to be really compelling.

Then there's the implication that beautiful people are soulless. That's certainly not beautiful.

Wait, what? Yeah, that kind of pops up. Grays seem to become more attractive to humans after they've been turned, as shown by all the boys that start to drool over Samantha after her change. Applying the implication to the real world was especially fun. Consider what this would mean for Hollywood and all the beautiful people that live there and you might see what I mean. And we've also got our super-hot mean girl, but she--funnily enough--does still have her soul.

The antagonist didn't think out her evil plan. Like, at all. To stop the flow of power to Heaven and Hell like she wants to, she and her legions would have to kill a lot of humans and turn just as many into grays that need to feed on human souls to live. By the time Heaven and Hell fall apart like she wants them too, there will be too many grays and there won't be enough human souls to feed them, leading to the starvation of billions and a planet full of zombie-grays. Following the logic seems clear to me, but not so much for her.

Book two of the series, Wicked Kiss, was set for release in 2013 last time I checked, but I highly doubt I'll check it out. Angel and demon fans that don't discriminate and fans of the author will love Rowen's latest offering, but I can't say I did. Not exactly encouraged to try out any of her other novels after this bucket of cliches.

2 stars!

What am I reading next?: Underworld by Meg Cabot

Angelfall by Susan Ee

Title: Angelfall
Author: Susan Ee
Publisher: Feral Dream
Release Date: May 21, 2011
Pages: 255 pages (paperback)
How I Got the Book: Bought it.

It's been six weeks since angels of the apocalypse descended to demolish the modern world. Street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night. When warrior angels fly away with a helpless little girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her back.

Anything, including making a deal with an enemy angel.

Raffe is a warrior who lies broken and wingless on the street. After eons of fighting his own battles, he finds himself being rescued from a desperate situation by a half-starved teenage girl.

Traveling through a dark and twisted Northern California, they have only each other to rely on for survival. Together, they journey toward the angels' stronghold in San Francisco where she'll risk everything to rescue her sister and he'll put himself at the mercy of his greatest enemies for the chance to be made whole again.

Review:

For months now, I've been watching all my friends read Angelfall and fall in love with it one by one (with an exception here or there). I haven't seen them hype up a book like this since Anna Dressed in Blood and Divergent, both of which failed to impress me, so I was fearful of reading the book. (Also, I always get to a fad at least two months after it's over. No real reason; it naturally happens that way no matter what I do.) So here I am, getting to Angelfall two months later than everyone else. The curse is broken! My friend hyped up something and it was actually worth it!

 Penryn is just the kind of heroine I like: stong-willed, able to do what she has to do, but still a teenage girl with insecurities and all. It seems a little convenient she had a form of survival training already thanks to her paranoid schizophrenic mother, but it never felt that way. It just felt right. Though the book was not about her dysfunctional family (the aforementioned mother, absentee father, sister who can't walk), the effect her lifestyle has had on her shows and guides her actions like it should.

One of my most common complaints about books is pacing. I have a short attention span anyway, but most books don't have what it takes to keep me going. They're too long and spread out action too far apart (or have no action at all, in rare cases), or too short and nothing happens at all, or they may be trying to make everything happen at once and cause a train wreck of sorts. Not Angelfall. Fights, interactions with other characters, and traveling are equally interspersed and even when I wasn't reading, I never lost interest.

The descriptions are not always picture perfect and could have used some work, but they feel raw and in the last quarter of the book, they get downright powerful. I felt myself getting a little green in the face at the mental images of... I can't even tell you. It's one of those things you have to discover yourself. I can say this much: It's horrifying, it's grotesque, but it well-written and it's fantastic. If you get squeamish easily at descriptions in books, you may want to keep a baggie or a trash can close.

So why am I being greedy with my stars and giving it only four instead of five like most of my friends have? Well, the descriptions, as I mentioned above, got a little clunky at points and gave me a mental image that ruined the mood, like when Raffe's back was compared to raw hamburgers with a metaphor. It's a valid description, but the image it conjured up made me giggle when I really shouldn't have been giggling. I wasn't a fan of how almost all the female characters were portrayed negatively if they weren't related to Penryn. The "all unrelated females are rivals/evil" mentality is so obsolete.

If you need me, I'll be in line with everyone else, impatiently awaiting Angelfall's sequel and occasionally rereading my copy during the long wait.

4 stars!

What am I reading next?: Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin

A Beautiful Dark by Jocelyn Davies

200th post! Woohoo!

Title: A Beautiful Dark
Author: Jocelyn Davies
Publisher: HarperCollins/HarperTeen
Release Date: September 27, 2011
Pages: 390 pages (hardcover)


On the night of Skye's seventeenth birthday, she meets two enigmatic strangers. Complete opposites;like fire and ice;Asher is dark and wild, while Devin is fair and aloof. Their sudden appearance sends Skye's life into a tailspin. She has no idea what they want, or why they seem to follow her every move only that their presence coincides with a flurry of strange events. Soon she begins to doubt not just the identity of the two boys, but also the truth about her own past.

In the dead of a bitingly cold Colorado winter, Skye finds herself coming to terms with the impossible secret that threatens to shatter her world. Torn between Asher, who she can't help falling for, and Devin, who she can't stay away from, the consequences of Skye's choice will reach further than the three of them could ever imagine.

Review:

Once upon a time, there was an idea, A Beautiful Dark, and me.

See, I like to write too. I want to be published one day, and one of the many ideas I've had (but have not yet had the chance to pursue) went like this: an agent of good, an agent of evil, and the high school girl they're trying to win over to their side of an ancient war. Only good is also evil, evil is still evil (but sympathetic), and the high school girl will take no bull from either of them. She won't waste her time with anyone who don't give her the respect than she deserves and would rather die than be forced to join the war on either side against her will--and does, actually.

It sounds like a lot of YA these days, right? But A Beautiful Dark in particular seemed to come close to what I had planned. I don't want to be a plagiarist or a copycat (and despite what the success of one author might tell you, being a plagiarist or a copycat does not get you anywhere), so I resolved to read this book despite knowing I wouldn't like it very much. I don't always read bad books for snark, you know. It's occasionally for a pseudo-educational purpose.

And lo and behold, my instincts and were right. I did not like this book, but it gave me some food for thought and a greater sense of direction with my own story. I'll have to make a few changes because they're more similar than I would like them to be, but it will inevitably improve my story so it doesn't end up being as bad as A Beautiful Dark.

In equal parts, Sky drove me nuts and earned my pity. On the drove-me-nuts side, she was inconsistently characterized and I couldn't get a good handle on her. In a single chapter, she does from "I vowed to avoid [Asher and Devin] as much as possible" to "If I kissed [Asher] right now, he'd taste like mint" to (when Asher asks her on a date) "[Meeting my friends] was the truth, but it felt like I was making up an excuse somehow."

But Skye wants to go to Columbia! Fantastic! Aspiring for admission to such a college is a quality I like in heroines. Tell me, what does she want as a career? What is her planned major? How much has it influenced who she is?

Hello? Anyone?

Exactly. It's called characterization. Readers could have gotten a deeper sense of who Skye was with that kind of detail, but a half-baked attempt like this only makes the book worse. Books like A Beautiful Dark that make half-baked attempts at characterization like that (it seems so obvious the detail was shoved in at the last minute so the book wouldn't be called anti-feminist) make me angrier than books that don't try at all. This isn't the only book to try such a trick. It's more like the fifth I've read in recent memory.

Devin and Asher were not well-developed as love interests or as characters. Skye knows their pursuit of her has nothing to do with wanting her affection--in fact, she brings this up multiple times. So why is she attracted to them? Why does she tolerate their attentions and agonize over whether or not she likes them when they aren't worth a second of her time? They aren't worth her time. Skye should have the self-respect to recognize she deserves more than lies and games of hot-and-cold. Every woman does.

Do we really teach young women should tolerate and even encourage someone's pursuit of them even if she knows it's a farce? We're in 2012, not 1889. Why do we still teach them to disrespect themselves like this when it's wrong on multiple levels? I was practically on my knees begging Skye to have some self-respect and tell them to piss off until their pursuit became more about her than each other, but she never did. I thought she would after demonstrating the presence of a working brain, but it appears only a miniscule piece of that brain actually worked. This is why I pity her.

This book doesn't have enough action to be plot-driven or enough deep characterization to be character-driven, so what drives the book? Nothing. It's a plotless piece of fluff. Only read it if you absolutely love love triangles. Again, ONLY READ IT IF YOU ABSOLUTELY LOVE LOVE TRIANGLES. You will not like it otherwise. Writing is blah, supporting characters are blah, and everything about this book is just. So. Blah.

In terms of enjoyment, it gets one star, but it earns a star back because it was useful. I have a clearer idea of what I want to do. For one thing, my heroine is going to have enough self-respect to tell her suitors to piss off when she figures out they're not actually fighting over her, just what she can do. A girl is worth more than that kind of treatment. For another, she's not going to flip-flop about how she feels multiple times in one chapter. Books like A Beautiful Dark make me weary of YA and our society, but they teach me so many things. I suppose I can be thankful for that much.

2 stars!

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Hallowed by Cynthia Hand

Title: Hallowed

Author: Cynthia Hand

Publisher: HarperCollins/HarperTeen

Release Date: January 17, 2012

Pages: 403 pages (hardcover)

How I Got the Book: Bought it.

For months Clara Gardner trained to face the fire from her visions, but she wasn't prepared for the choice she had to make that day. And in the aftermath, she discovered that nothing about being part angel is as straightforward as she thought.

Now, torn between her love for Tucker and her complicated feelings about the roles she and Christian seem destined to play in a world that is both dangerous and beautiful, Clara struggles with a shocking revelation: Someone she loves will due in a matter of months. With her future uncertain, the only thing Clara knows for sure is that the fire was just the beginning.

In this compelling sequel to Unearthly, Cynthia Hand captures the joy of first love, the anguish of loss, and the confusion of becoming who you are.

Review:

The fire happened, but Clara's defiance may have changed what was supposed to be. Now aware of Christian's secret and feeling more drawn to him as the complicated roles they are supposed to play in each other's lives become more untangled, Clara is struggling to deal with that and keep her relationship with Tucker strong. The choice between free will and duty is never easy. Meanwhile, both her mother and her brother begin to act strangely and a new vision unfolds in Clara's dreams. If what she is seeing is true, someone she loves will be dead by spring.

Wow. I... I've been staring at my keyboard for some time trying to come up with words for this book, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say. It's been a while now since I finished Hallowed and I've been digesting its content, but putting together words to match the very emotional response I had to the novel is so difficult. Whoever says detailing an emotional response to a book makes a review invalid can shove it. The emotional response it elicits from readers is the true testament to a book's worth.

I found Unearthly to be a nice little book, fun but not overly involving, but Hallowed kicks it up many notches. The middle books of trilogies are often dull and feel like set-up for the last book, but not this middle book. It's been so long since I read such an emotionally intense book that had me laughing my head off on one page, crying like a newborn infant the next, and sobbing like someone close to me had suddenly died when I turned the last page. I can't tell you how long I sat there sobbing so hard I could hardly breathe. When I took breaks from reading, the whiplash of going from an intense book to a placid academic book was almost painful.

I was so frustrated with the characters. Frustrated at Jeffery for not talking to his family, which could have solved a lot of problems. Frustrated at Tucker's jealous streak. Frustrated at how Christian says he isn't pressuring Clara when he is with all his talk of how important they are to each other. Frustrated that Clara feels like she needs to constantly prove to Tucker she loves him when his jealous streak emerges. Frustrated at Clara's mother for keeping so many secrets. For those frustrations, I love all the characters even more (except maybe Tucker and Christian) because those little things they do that I find so frustrating make them human. Their nuanced characterization is a great improvement from the first book and much deeper than I am used to.

Clara has become one of my favorite YA heroines for her accurate voice, likable personality, and how she rings so true as a teenager. Some characters read like caricatures of teenagers or adults in a fifteen-year-old girl's body, but not Clara. She, with all her flaws and strengths and humor, is someone I could see walking down the halls of a high school, being the girl that is always walking hand-in-hand with her boyfriend in the hallway, and experiencing the true searing pain of being torn between two people. We need more heroines like her that feel real like us instead of reading as just a fictional character.

It's never been a secret that I despise love triangles. There were times in the novel where I wanted Clara to just do something about it already, but this novel handles the triangle with the depth it needs to work without being annoying, along with eliminating the limited black-and-white mentality from the equation. Between Tucker, the boy she truly loves but can't share all of herself with, and Christian, who she is apparently supposed to be with because he's just like her and involved with her purpose, there is no room for looking at this in black and white. The heart is too complicated for the way it works to be examined in such a way, and the novel taking this into consideration and making both of the love interests likable is how Hallowed succeeds where so many YA PNR novels fail.

If the novel had such a profound effect on me, why four stars instead of five? The story was so focused on Clara and her guy drama that it feels like other stories equally as interesting as Clara's were neglected. The story of her mom and Samjeeza, for instance. Jeffery's story. Angela's story. Maybe these will be expanded upon in the final book, in a novella, in short stories, or whatever, but I wanted to go back to those paths and follow them for a little while, not be forced to shuffle along on my current path.

Many of my friends read Hallowed months ago when an ARC of it was made available on NetGalley, though my own requests for the novel were denied by the publisher over a dozen times. While I enviously watched and avoided every spoiler as if it were toxic (but one still made it into my feed due to forces not in my control--thanks, Cillian), I wondered what they could be taking about when they raved about it. I was familiar with their love for all things Unearthly; their hype and my personal reading project was what got me to read it in the first place. Now that I have read the sequel, a novel they showered praise upon more heavily than they did for the first book, I can see why they felt the way they did. I feel it. Oh, do I feel it.

Unearthly was a fun little romp in YA PNR that I enjoyed specifically because it did not make me want to blow a gasket. With Hallowed, Hand ups the stakes and turned my fluffy enjoyment of the first novel into a full-blown emotional investment in the series. I'll be back for book three.

4 stars!

What am I reading next?: Shadows on the Moon by Zoe Marriott

Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick

Title: Crescendo
Author: Becca Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Release Date: October 19, 2010
Pages: 427 pages (hardcover)
How I Got the Book: Read it on my Kindle

Nora Grey's life is still far from perfect. Surviving an attempt on her life wasn't pleasant, but at least she got a guardian angel out of it: a mysterious, magnetic, gorgeous guardian angel. But, despite his role in her life, Patch has been acting anything but angelic. He's more elusive than ever and even worse, he's started spending time with Nora's arch-enemy, Marcie Millar.

Nora would have hardly noticed Scott Parnell, an old family friend who has moved back to town, if Patch hadn't been acting so distant. Even with Scott's totally infuriating attitude Nora finds herself drawn to him - despite her lingering feeling that he's hiding something.

Haunted by images of her murdered father, and questioning whether her Nephilim bloodline has anything to do with his death, Nora puts herself increasingly in dangerous situations as she desperately searches for answers. But maybe some things are better left buried, because the truth could destroy everything - and everyone - she trusts.

Review:

Oh, Crescendo. I always told myself I wouldn't read it, but I wanted so badly to join in my friends' discussions of the many problematic elements of this series. If they could suffer through it, why couldn't I? (And maybe just a little bit of it was my contrary nature responding to the "Be Nice" BS But only a little.) I couldn't do that without reading all the books currently available, so into Crescendo I dove. I regret this. I regret every minute wasted on it.

This series is discussed enough for its problematic content, but it really gets kicked up a notch in this book. A scene late in the book where people just stand around and laugh at Nora when she's trying to get away from Scott made me want a trash can. It troubles me that the word "no" does not seem to exist in this series, as Nora can only ever come up with excuses not to do something with a guy, which will lead to him trying again later in hopes of there not being an excuse anymore, instead of giving him a flat-out no.

Nora. Oh, Nora. I thought I hated this brainless, immature, slut shaming, unapologetic, overly angsty monster of a human being in the first book, but she's five times worse in Crescendo. She goes full-blown psychotic on everyone. Breaking into people's houses multiple times, considering suicide over Patch not being with her anymore, indirectly and directly calling Marcie a slut more often than she can come up with a coherent thought of her own,... And this is our main character who, if my reading of the text is correct, we are supposed to support despite--no, because of--her actions. She takes a sledgehammer to the lives of everyone she knows while trying to get her happy ending and I don't see why I'm supposed to like her.

Just when I thought Patch couldn't get any worse, he did. The way he jerked Nora back and forth, pushing her away one minute and pulling her back in the next so they could make out, disgusted me and almost made me feel sorry for Nora that she's trapped in such a toxic dynamic with this man. How the reader is expected to view Patch gave me a nasty case of whiplash. In the first book, we're supposed to find his innuendos, controlling behavior, manhandling, and general asshattery romantic and sexy. Now we're supposed to hate him for it? Which one is it? I hated him in both books, but this case of mixed messages reveals exactly what is wrong with Patch's character.

I am not always the most grammatically correct person on the Internet, and I get even less sensible in the real world because verbal communication is difficult for me, but Crescendo often makes less sense than I do in either world. There are numerous sentences that read horribly despite an arguable technical correctness. For example: "She should have learned her lesson at Bo's and stayed home. And so should have I (Crescendo, 28%)." All it takes to fix a problem like this is different phrasing, but the book can't even do that much.

Inconsistent characterization for the sake of conflict is a big pet peeve. In the first book, few people objected to Nora getting close to Patch, especially not Nora's best friend Vee. Now everyone, especially Vee, is against him. One minute, Vee is boy-crazy. The next, she's 100% dedicated to her new beau Rixon. The mom is brought in simply to act as another barrier between Nora and Patch and a slew of minor characters get thrown in just to try and drum up some more conflict when it's never going to happen. Crescendo and conflict are incompatible.

Not that the book would have been good if any of those characters were more consistent. Just as it happened in the first book, the prologue gave everything away. For all the talk of the archangels, they're never actually a threat. We're constantly told the archangels are watching and breathing down Patch's neck, but he and Nora get away with so much that it makes the "threat" the archangels are supposed to pose nonexistent and makes them look like idiots. This is a disservice to the book and slander toward the archangels.

All the evidence I need to prove how unhealthy Patch and Nora's relationship is can be found in this book. Scott and Patch are undeniably the same kind of person: the bad boy who will take a girl and put her through hell. She can recognize that Scott is this kind of person and has no problem saying so, but she refuses to recognize Patch is the same way. I thought she did for one moment, but her eventual forgiveness of Patch renders that null and void. Neither of them can leave the other alone after the breakup and just when Nora feels ready to move on, Patch pulls her right back into his trap. Once again, I almost feel sorry for Nora. Close but no cigar.

The most maddening detail of their endless relationship angst? Neither party is sympathetic. Nora is downright obsessive, contradicting, and psychotic. The main difference between Patch's behavior pre- and post-breakup is that there were less innuendos post-breakup, but we're supposed to hate him for his behavior in this book when readers were supposed to find it sexy in the last book. This controlling douchecanoe of a man jerks Nora back and forth, but she's stealing from other people's homes because of him, and they both treat each other horribly. I wish both of them would die, preferably by being tortured to death by axe murderers.

And in the end, Nora forgives him. All that manhandling and controlling behavior and playing hot-and-cold with her that she hated him for when they were broken up? She forgives him for all of it. Based on my readings of Hush, Hush and Crescendo, I feel Nora only had a problem with his controlling behavior in this book because they were not together. If they had still been dating, she would have been fine with it. That this is supposed to be okay and readers are supposed to find this romantic makes me sick yet again. This book made me fill up my vomit bucket.

But I will admit one thing: This book made me cry... because it was so terrible. I also cried for Marcie. Marcie, who never had a chance as a character. Marcie, who is slut shamed at every turn while the reader is supposed to think Nora is the "good girl" (and as I elaborated earlier, Nora is anything but). Marcie, who is the closest thing to a complex, flawed character this series has but is here mainly for readers to hate by slandering her at every turn. Marcie, who is bullied and degraded more by Nora than she ever bullies Nora in return. She is not a good person, but Marcie is far more likable than Nora. Heck, I think Marcie's worst crime is having no idea what it means to be tactful--kind of like me.

Going on would be no problem because the problems in this book are endless, but twelve paragraphs is enough and I wanted to get started on the long road to healing. I was supposed to read Silence after this to continue what I lovingly dubbed the Speak Up mini-project, but I can't do it. If this one was so bad it made me cry because it was so terrible, how am I supposed to be able to survive Silence and eventually the fourth book? I can't, man. I just can't. I'm signing off and grabbing a better book.

0 stars! (And I would give it negative stars if I rated books that way.)

What am I reading next?: Ash by Malinda Lo

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Title: Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Author: Laini Taylor
Publisher: Little, Brown
Release Date: September 27, 2011
Pages: 420 pages (hardback)
How I Got the Book: Amazon Vine-provided ARC

Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.



Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.

When one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?

Review:

It was difficult to come up with a review that was more intelligent than "YESYEYESYESYEYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES" times infinity, so here goes something.

Raised by the chimaeras from birth, Karou is an art student living in Prague and runs errands for Brimstone, the chimaera she pretty much considers her own father. Picking up teeth for him here and there isn't so bad (usually) and she gets wishes in return, letting her do things like give her wings or make her hair grow out of her head naturally blue. Then the black handprints begin showing up on doorways and Karou meets Akiva, a seraph soldier in the war against the chimaeras.They fall hard and fast and he may be the key to helping Karou find out where she came from and who she is. But could knowing cost her everything?

I could swear the author has been silently watching and reading all the grievances YA PNR readers have with the genre because the book manages to avert pretty much all possible problems even when they come close (like a guy watching a girl while she sleeps--don't worry, he doesn't do it for long because he figures out he shouldn't). The characters are vivid, the world-building with the seraph and the chimaera is clear and original, and I want to read it all over again when I just finished it a few hours ago. The descriptions of Prague and all the other locales visited over the course of the book really come to life and you can see the Poison Kitchen as if you were standing right in front of it.

A little more on the characters: Karou is exactly the kind of heroine I like. Flawed, but human and very enjoyable to read about instead of painful. Akiva, the love interest any maybe even co-protagonist considering the sizable portion of the book he narrated, wasn't too bad either. While they fall in love very quickly and this is normally a turn-off for me, something clicked this time and it felt right. Their relationship even has a healthy dynamic! Imagine my surprise that for once, the love interest didn't keep things from the heroine just to keep her from falling out of love with him or getting angry and he actually trusted her.

I'm not a prosey person. I'm not. In the never-ending battle of pretty prose vs. constant plot, the plot always wins despite my appreciation for good prose. When I run across those rare books that have both plot and prose so beautiful I wish I could write like that, they have my heart and my attention. Smoke and Bone is one of those books. I don't like omnipresent third-person point of view either, but it was the perfect type of narration for the novel. It read almost like a fairy tale, similar to the writing in her previous YA novel Lips Touch: Three Times, a book I also loved and that led me to Smoke and Bone.

The book isn't even out yet and I'm hungry for the next installment! I guess I have only two things left to say. One is that you--yeah, you, with the funny look on your face--should read this book. The second is screw the ARC, I want a hardcover. I'm so happy and lucky I snagged an ARC before they ran out, but I want final copies of the books I really loved and I want to give it a proper sale. For writing such a wonderful book, the author deserves the slice of the money pie she'll earn when I buy it.

5 stars!

What am I reading next?: Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel

H.Y.P.E. Project: Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Title: Hush, Hush

Author: Becca Fitzpatrick

Publisher: Simon & Schuster/ Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing

Release Date: October 13, 2009

Pages: 391 pages (paperback)

How I Got the Book: Bought and read it for the H.Y.P.E. Project (details here)

When Nora and Patch are forced together as lab partners, Nora would rather fall to her death than put up with his elusive answers to her questions, his teasing, and his infuriatingly handsome face and hypnotizing eyes. It seems Patch was put on earth just to drive her crazy.

But before long, Nora's defenses begin to break down as her curiosity about Patch heats up. Why does he always seem to be wherever she is and know exactly what she's thinking? How does he know what to say to both attract and repulse her? And what is up with those V-shaped scars on his chiseled back?

As their connection grows stronger, Nora's own life becomes increasingly fragile. Nora needs to decide: Is Patch the one who wants to do her harm of the one who will keep her safe? Has she fallen for one of the fallen?

Becca Fitzpatrick's New York Times bestselling debut is a page-turning leap into the unknown world of fallen angels. Do you have someone to catch you?

Review:

Something is off about Patch Cipriano and his unfortunate new biology partner Nora Grey is determined to find out what's it is. She can tell there's something more going on behind that pretty face and those demeaning remarks of his. In her investigation, she comes to find herself attracted to him and she could quite possibly be falling in love with him, but could what she's finding be true? Could Patch really be a fallen angel out to kill her (and maybe Vee too, but who cares about her?)? If it is, it doesn't look like he's the only one who wants to see Nora dead. Strange things are happening and only some of them are in her head.

Characters

Characterization is thin and calling them two-dimensional is an insult to the term. Nora seems to lack any brains and my I've no doubt she is mentally unstable; if she thinks faking a bomb threat to get Patch's file is okay because she's his biology partner, something is wrong. The only person I can stand is Marcie Millar, the classic mean girl (who apparently becomes a love rival in the second book or something; I've got no plans to read it, so I don't know all the details), but she is busy being slut-shamed and made the butt of a thousand jokes. Being mean makes her a bad person, not being flirtatious or sexual. Got that, book? Okay.

Two characters in the cast stand out for the wrong reasons. Vee may be the worst best friend I've ever had the displeasure to know in both fiction and real life, and I've had a terrible best friend of my own (but that's another story). She makes excuses for a guy who threatened her "best friend" Nora, abandons Nora, and pressures Nora to be with a guy she does not like, among other things. She is the second-worst character in this book.

The worst? Patch Cipriano. His behavior is disgusting, borderline abusive, and the sort of behavior parents tell their children to watch out for because it could turn into a toxic or abusive relationship. When the heroine is genuinely afraid of her love interest and thinks he might rape her (and there were plenty of moments where it seemed like he would do just that) as in Hush, Hush, the love interest is on my blacklist. There's being a bad boy or anti-hero (which requires redeeming traits) and then there's being a borderline rapist, which Patch is. He's the polar opposite of sexy.

Pacing/Plot

The pacing and plot are disjointed. This is about how the novel goes: Nora and Patch are falling in love (personally, I think they're falling in lust, which would be fine if it weren't being passed off as love when the two are very different), a creepy event or two happens once in a while, Nora and Patch fall in love some more, more creepy things, rotate between the two and add in liberal amounts of  disgusting behavior by Patch added where needed, big reveal, sudden reveal of villains, an almost-sex break, climactic scene, and end on a sappy note. That is Hush, Hush in a nutshell, only it's far less interesting.

Themes/Conflicts

Hush, Hush competes with only one other novel for the award of Worst Themes. According to this book, it is okay for a boy to humiliate, threaten, dismiss, and treat a girl badly because that just makes him a sexy bad boy. This is probably only okay when the guy is as insanely hot as Patch is supposed to be (I don't find him hot; I find that when a guy has a personality as pleasant as the smell of dog crap, it becomes impossible to appreciate how hot they are) because if it were a plain or ugly guy doing it, it would be Not Okay. Nora never has any true conflict to deal with and the book's conflict isn't genuine.

What I hate most about this book is how its themes help glorify creepy, pseudo-rapist behavior through Nora's initial weak rejection and ultimate unconditional acceptance of the way Patch treats her (which does not change throughout the entire novel). His behavior is horrifying and the people who instead call it flattering are often the people who say I should be flattered at all the awful, creepy things guys have said and done to me over the years when I didn't want them behaving like that towards me and made it clear.

There are simply so many offensive ideas and phrases within the book, such as the heavy reinforcing of rape culture, but I don't have the space or time to cover them all.

Writing

Painful. Description is often bad or repetitive and there appears to be no such thing as subtlety because hints are like a bag of bricks to the head each time they pop up. Then it gets lazy for the sake of plot convenience when the symptoms of a concussion, such as difficulty or unwillingness to talk due to the injury, are waved off so Vee can testify to Nora about her attacker and when Vee gets out of the hospital far quicker than someone in her condition would, or when Elliot is identified in a news story as someone questioned in the death of another student. I don't need to be a three-year journalism student to know no news service would identify a minor if they had only been questioned. Charged or convicted? Often, yes. Questioned? No.

There is also one offensive issue regarding word choice that I would like to bring up. Vee, an overweight character, is described as "voluptuous" multiple times. Right now, the United States (where the book is set and where I, the author, and countless fans live) is experiencing a problem with obesity and there are multiple campaigns against it. What comes to mind when you think of "voluptuous" women? Personally, I think of women with large breasts, usually thin waists, and sometimes large butts. At one time, it was used to describe more than women with that figure, but that is what it's used to describe most often now.

Vee is clearly not this body type from her description and the book creeps around describing her as overweight or fat. The creeping around is bad enough because of how much it reveals about what Nora really thinks of Vee, but the I don't appreciate that women with that sort of figure (hourglass figure, right?) are indirectly being called fat. Nine times out of ten, they can't control their figure that easily; losing weight won't make their breasts any smaller in most cases because it's genetic. This is the author's problem now, not the book's. If there's anything the author can control, it's the specific word choice.

Logic

Almost nonexistent. Why would an entire class as important as biology be axed over sex ed? More likely, the teaching guidelines would be changed to exclude sex ed. No teacher would ever allow one student to humiliate another the way Patch humiliated Nora and if they did, they wouldn't get away with it. Then there's what happened due to the lazy writing, discussed in the writing section. The biggest fart in logic may be, as I said earlier, how in the world Nora falls in love with Patch when he treats her so terribly. Someone can make you feel tingly all over and make you want to screw them, but that doesn't always mean you're in love. That's lust, a separate entity from love, and that's what's really between Nora and Patch.

I may not be a mother, but I am baffled and horrified at the behavior of Nora's mother. Just a year after the murder of her husband, Nora's mom has a job that takes her far away from her daughter for long periods of time and they appear to have very little contact with one another. Shouldn't she be getting closer, not farther away? I speak from personal experience on that. Honestly, there were so many farts in logic, writing, characterization, and everything else that I couldn't find the words a few times and could only write squiggles in the book.

Was it worth the hype?

The hype that this book is sexy, dark, has the sexiest hunk of man/fallen angel to grace the pages of a book, romantic, and great? Absolutely not.

The hype that this book is terrible, infuriating, boring, anti-feminist, provides the world with both one of the worst best friends/friendships to grace the pages of a book and the worst love interest to exist in any media, and is most likely the most reprehensible YA novel to be published in recent memory? Without a doubt, yes. I wouldn't wish this book on my worst enemy.

Bonus cover section

This may be the best part of the book: its cover. While the color scheme has difficulty standing out, the image is striking and can easily catch the eye of someone passing by in a bookstore (which I tested out and confirmed last time I visited a bookstore). However, it immediately gives away what the book is about and if a passing reader decides to buy the book and read it, they will probably become frustrated that it takes Nora so long (about 250 pages) to figure out what Patch is when they knew before they even began reading.

0 stars!

What am I reading next?: Eyes Like Stars by Lisa Mantchev

Hades by Alexandra Adornetto

Title: Hades
Author: Alexandra Adornetto
Publisher: Macmillan/Feiwel & Friends
Release Date: August 30, 2011
Pages: 422 pages (hardback)
How I Got the Book: Amazon Vine-provided ARC

Even the love of her boyfriend, Xavier Woods, and her siblings, Gabriel and Ivy, can't keep the angel Bethany Church from being tricked into a motorcycle ride that ends up in Hell. There, Jake Thorn bargains for Beth's release back to Earth. But what he asks of her will destroy her, and quite possibly, her loved ones. Can he be trusted in this wager?

Alexandra Adornetto's Hades has it all--good and evil, angels and demons, romance and heartbreak.

Review:

Almost six months after Halo, Bethany and her boyfriend Xavier are preparing to graduate from high school and go to college. Jake is freed from Hell after some fun with Ouija boards at a Halloween party goes wrong and he easily tricks Bethany into going to Hell with him. Bethany finds herself miserable, but the Lake of Dreams provides a way to see how Xavier, Gabriel, and Ivy are faring. While they try and find a way to break Beth out of the prison called Hell, Jake is working his hardest to seduce Bethany because if he gets his way, she's staying in Hell as his princess.

I can sum up why I felt the way I did about this book in two quick points:

• Bethany uses a Ouija board. Again, an angel of God uses a Ouija board, a very powerful and dangerous occult item.
• If Bethany had applied any logical thought to the situation, she could have avoided being tricked and taken to Hell. Everything about the situation, from how they left on foot but came back with a motorcycle to the person's admittance of drinking, should have made Bethany wary of riding with them. It didn't.

This was an error in the ARC that didn't make it into the final copy, but it was such a gem that I want to make sure people know it was there: Jake steps on the gas pedal of his motorcycle at one point. Motorcycles have throttle on the right handlebar that you twist, not gas pedals. Adornetto's lack of experience and inability to do research show, but this no longer counts toward the book's rating.

Are you still unconvinced and feel I need to go more in-depth? Keep reading.

The characters remain nearly unchanged. Bethany has me convinced a side effect of an angel so young coming to Earth is that her brain didn't come with her. Xavier is still a bland love interest with shades of controlling and Jake is still a failure in every corner as a villain. Ivy takes a level in badass and Gabriel manages to change a little too. Molly's growth or likability is debatable, but her dramatics later in the book didn't endear her to me. New characters such as mean girl demon Asia and friendly demons Tucker and Hanna are flat too. Even Lucifer, the legendary fallen angel of legend, falls flat and is unconvincing as someone charismatic enough to make other angels turn against God.

There is a noticeable lack of research and there are discontinuities between Halo and Hades that desperately need correction before final publication. In Halo, Xavier was school captain and there were rugby players; in Hades, he's the class president (the US term for school captain, the latter being what it's called in the author's native country Australia) and they now play football instead of rugby. The motorcycle gas pedal gaffe is another example, and I could go on.

In fact, I will because a lot of the inaccuracies have to do with myths. As far as I know (and supported by one of the BFFs), a third of the angels in Heaven fell with Lucifer. In Hades, only eight fell, which is directly stated because of its importance in the worldbuilding. There were more than twenty-four angels in Heaven in the beginning, I'm sure The river Lethe makes you forget everything, not just the bad deeds you did, and of all the fallen angels to make an Original and a prince of one of Hell's nine circles, Arakiel isn't a good choice. Try Semyaza, leader of the Watchers and Arakiel's superior. (Thanks and credit go to Kira for teaching me that.)

This is a pet peeve and it had no bearing at all on my rating, but I was disappointed at how little research was done into the setting too. Venus Cove is stated as being in the coastal county of Sherbrooke County, Georgia. Sherbrooke County does not exist, but there are approximately 18 coastal counties in the state of Georgia. Maybe this bothers me because I'm a Georgia-born girl and I would like to see my home state get a more accurate spotlight put on it (or maybe the book could just not be set in Georgia at all; that would be nice).

Bethany and Xavier's relationship remains unhealthy as they continue to focus on one another's physical attributes instead of their personalities. Bonus: They both creepily take a whiff of each other's clothing before they go to bed. This book somehow made me more confused as to what they see in one another. Bethany sees how snappish and moody Xavier gets when under pressure and never considers that if she stays with him, she would be the target of his misdirected ire. And there's a chapter early in the book that lacks any significance to the story as a whole; it reads like a "screw you!" from author to reader specifically written for that purpose.

Did you hate how Bethany let Xavier protect and save her instead of trying to protect and save herself? It gets no better. In all her time in Hell, she makes one escape attempt. And of all the reasons one could come up with for wanting to get out of Hell (because it's a terrible place, or because demons are either trying to sex her up (consent optional) or kill her), she wants to leave because she needs her boyfriend fix. She flat-out admits she was content to wait to be rescued. Quotes would be given, but I can't because it's an ARC. In the end, she still ends up the damsel, being saved by others once again and literally hiding behind her rescuers during the climactic scene. We get some purity myth indoctrination too about being worth less or less lovable if you have sex, but I'm not even getting into that. This review is long enough as it is.

Because Bethie isn't around on Earth to narrate what's going on with them, we have the Lake of Dreams plot device, which allows someone who drinks from it to see what their heart most desires and lets Bethany narrate what's going on elsewhere. Someone told me that it could be used for psychological torture when I thought the Lake of Dreams was ridiculous, and that's a valid point. But why isn't it ever discussed as though it were once or still being used for psychological torture? Then we get another dose of deus ex machina where, if Bethany had just done that earlier in the book, so many pages could have been cut from a book that both is long and feels long.

Adornetto's vision of Hell is hopelessly muddled and contradictory. The world she built in Halo and Hades is heavily rooted in the Bible and Christianity. In those, Hell is a place of punishment not only for the humans that sinned while alive and did not gain or attempt to gain forgiveness, but also for Lucifer and the angels that followed him in his rebellion against God. In Hades, Hell is appropriately hellish in one part of it, where the human souls are tortured, but then there are nightclubs and high-class hotels for the demons, undermining what Hell is all about.

Hades. Is. Not. Hell. This is a huge pet peeve of mine. Hades is sometimes used to refer to the Greek Underworld, though it is also the name of the god of the Underworld. All souls, good or bad, went to Hades and were then sorted into afterlives appropriately depending on whether the humans were good or bad while alive. The Christian Hell is a place of punishment for the fallen angels and sinful humans, as stated previously. The two are so radically different that trying to call the Hell within this book Hades is irritating because the two are not interchangeable. The attempts at blending the two into one realm, along with the parallels and allusions to the myth of Persephone, didn't work out.

The writing is still as atrocious as it ever was, maybe even more so in ARC form. There is repetitive description and wording (I will scream the next time I see "I know" in a book because it was used that much in Hades), purple prose, unnecessary description to bog down the pacing and scenes, numerous instances of cheating at narration (Bethany talks about how other characters feel or think when she has no way to know that), and one scene so badly worded that I had to reread it two more times to figure out what happened. The narration-cheating gets significantly worse during segments concentrating on Xavier and co.

But I will give some credit where it is due: Hades is an improvement, however slight I feel it is, on Halo. There was an exorcism scene late in Hades that was somewhat enjoyable and the plot took center stage fairly early in the book; I didn't have to wade through seemingly endless amounts of useless fluff to get to the plot like I did with Halo. Little details such as these weren't anywhere near close enough to countering the many problems within Hades, sadly.

I made the bad decision to read Halo, I made another bad decision to read Hades, but nothing short of having my dreams served to me on a silver platter with no strings attached and no possible way for it to backfire on me will get me to read Heaven. Not even to finish the series. Not even to entertain a few friends. I don't recommend starting this series at all, let alone reading Hades. Now I'm going to go watch two hours of Tokyo Mew Mew because when my brain needs relief, good-cheesy magical girl anime is the solution.

0 stars!

What am I reading next?: The Ghost and the Goth by Stacey Kade

H.Y.P.E. Project: Halo by Alexandra Adornetto

Title: Halo
Author: Alexandra Adornetto
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Release Date: August 31, 2010
Pages: 496 pages (hardback)

How I Got the Book: Got it on my Kindle for the H.Y.P.E. Project (details here)

Nothing much happens in the sleepy town of Venus Cove. But everything changes when three angels are sent from Heaven to protect the town against the gathering forces of darkness: Gabriel, the warrior; Ivy, the healer; and Bethany, a teenage girl who is the least experienced of the trio. They work hard to conceal their true identity and, most of all, their wings.

But the mission is threatened when the youngest angel, Bethany, is sent to high school and falls in love with the handsome school captain, Xavier Woods. Will she defy the laws of Heaven by loving him? Things come to a head when the angels realize they are not the only supernatural power in Venus Cove. There′s a new kid in town and he′s charming, seductive and deadly. Worst of all, he′s after Beth.

Review:

It is suspected that the town of Venus Cove is under attack by Agents of Darkness, so three angels are sent to the town in order to help the people regain their faith and become closer to God: warrior archangel Gabriel, healer Ivy, and Bethany, an angel only seventeen years old in mortal years. They're not supposed to get too close to the humans while on their mission, but Bethany immediately falls head over heels in love with Xavier Woods. Their relationship is not without its obstacles, including the objection of Bethany's angel siblings and the arrival of a strange new student from Great Britain named Jake Thorn who wants Bethany.

Characters

The characters in this book lack any depth and it would be more accurate to call them caricatures. The angels lack any personality; in-book, Bethany says that angels have no need to develop humans personalities because of what they are, but this excuse doesn't work because characters, angels or no, need personalities to make a good novel. (I would cite this quote exactly, but I am unable to due to reading it on a Kindle.) Xavier and Bethany's relationship is no sort of love anyone would call healthy; at best, it's an unhealthy infatuation between teenagers and at worst, it's obsession.

Every human character besides Xavier is made out to be shallow; boys only want to get in girls' pants and girls talk about nothing but prom. As anyone who knows real teenagers would know, real teens are nowhere near this shallow. It seems like they're all portrayed so shallowly and placed around Bethany to make her look better, but the trick doesn't work. Even Jake Thorn, the antagonist, was just a bunch of cliches thrown together instead of anything halfway memorable or remarkable.

Pacing/Plot

The plot was nonexistent until about the last fourth of the novel, when the antagonist Jake Thorn (whom Adornetto goes through pains to make obvious as the antagonist with passages far too heavy in foreshadowing) stepped up his game. Before then, it had been all about Bethany and Xavier becoming infatuated in one another. Neither of the characters are interesting enough to make the first three-fourths of the novel character-driven and the pacing suffers for it.

Themes/Conflicts

Feminists should stay away from this book at all costs. Many of the themes and messages within Halo carry a heavy antifeminist slant and it's not easy to ignore or avoid while reading. When many of these themes came around, it felt like I was being preached to by the author, and I didn't enjoy that at all. To start with (all of this is according to the book, not me; I don't believe in any of this), Christianity is the only way. The mistakes of a young woman reflect badly on the reputation of her entire family. A young woman is not responsible for her own mistakes because the man of the family takes them on as his own mistakes. You should judge a person by how they look because if they wear Gothic clothes, they are either evil or under the control of evil.

Throughout the entire book, women are very passive and it's always the men that take the first step or fight the big battles. The women are always the ones in need of saving. Even the dog refuses to sit when a female tells him so and then immediately sits when a male tells him so. This book is supposed to take place in the twenty-first century, and all these outdated values and blatant displays of sexism deserve no place here.

Conflict? There was none. Bethany and Xavier's relationship never faced anything I thought was a threat for even a second; I always knew they would just go around it or ignore what they were told to do so they could be together. The battle of good vs. evil didn't happen until the last ten percent of the novel and even that climactic scene lacked any tension or true conflict. To demonstrate, the following song was stuck in my head throughout the climax:

(What can I say? Sailor Moon will always have a special place in my heart, and this song fit the climactic scene too perfectly not to tell the world about it.)

Writing

Halo's writing was amateur at best and at worst...I really don't know what to say about it when it was at its worst. So much description could have been cut from this book without negatively impacting the reading experience--actually, cutting even half of the overly purple prose, unnecessary description, and just plain outlandish description would have made for a significant improvement. I'll just drop a few quotes here that I found while reading. They should say enough. Once again, I'm unable to cite page numbers due to reading it on my Kindle.

"Gabriel turned to look at me, his eyes the color of thunder."

"That was the effect he had on me--an explosion of happiness in my chest, scattering like little beads and making my whole body shiver and tingle."

And finally, the quote that has made many a feminist reader angry, one that definitely shouldn't have made it into the final copy. I take offense to this too and nothing I can say hasn't already been said:

"For the evening at least, feminist philosophy had been abandoned, and the girls, like fairy-tale princesses, allowed themselves to be led up the flight of steps and into the foyer."

Logic Only a select few books have ever made less sense. If my Christian mythology is correct, God has thrown angels out of Heaven and made them fallen angels before for putting anything, from love to their own selves, above God and their duty as angels. Bethany did just this, but she was not and never becomes a fallen angel. Angels are supposed to possess all human knowledge, but Bethany has no idea how to use a tube of lip gloss, and that's human knowledge too, albeit a different kind. It doesn't stop there. Where does a demon from Hell get a British accent from? Who brings a human who can easily get killed to a battle between a warrior angel and a demon? If Xavier is so in love with Bethany, why is he so unwilling to let her give her side of the story about what happened on prom night? Didn't the author know that an inverted pentagram (which is worn around Jake's neck at one point) is a pentacle, which is a symbol of good and white magic instead of black magic like she likely meant it to be? I could still go on. As I said, only a select few books have ever made less sense. Was it worth the hype? Admittedly, all the hype I heard for this book was negative. This is one of the worst books I've ever read, many friends said, and you should never read it if you value your sanity. Can it be helped that I got curious? But now that I've read it, I have to agree with them. It lived up to its negative hype and exceeded it. The one nice thing I heard was the the cover was lovely and in that respect, it also lived up to the hype. Bonus cover section The cover, I admit, is beautiful. The models' poses and the sun shining through creates a striking effect. Such a lovely cover is part of why Halo had so much hype. When beautiful covers like this are made, word gets around and people want to see if what's between the covers is as good. Some say that good covers often hide bad stories; in this case, I agree. Lovely covers do not a good book make. 0 stars! Halo was as bad as I'd heard it was and then some.

What am I reading next?: Chime by Franny Billingsley

H.Y.P.E. Project: Unearthly by Cynthia Hand

Title: Unearthly
Author: Cynthia Hand
Publisher: HarperCollins/HarperTeen
Release Date: January 4, 2011
Pages: 435 pages (hardback)

How I Got the Book: Found a copy for the H.Y.P.E. Project (details here)

 In the beginning, there's a boy standing in the trees . . .

Clara Gardner has recently learned that she's part angel. Having angel blood run through her veins not only makes her smarter, stronger, and faster than humans (a word, she realizes, that no longer applies to her), but it means she has a purpose, something she was put on this earth to do. Figuring out what that is, though, isn't easy.

Her visions of a raging forest fire and an alluring stranger lead her to a new school in a new town. When she meets Christian, who turns out to be the boy of her dreams (literally), everything seems to fall into place—and out of place at the same time. Because there's another guy, Tucker, who appeals to Clara's less angelic side.

As Clara tries to find her way in a world she no longer understands, she encounters unseen dangers and choices she never thought she'd have to make—between honesty and deceit, love and duty, good and evil. When the fire from her vision finally ignites, will Clara be ready to face her destiny?

Unearthly is a moving tale of love and fate, and the struggle between following the rules and following your heart.

Review:

Clara Gardner is a quarter angel, properly called Quartarius, and she has a special purpose she was put on Earth to do. Disorienting visions of a fire and a dark-haired teenage boy it seems she's supposed to rescue take her from California to Jackson Hole, Wyoming after some investigation. The boy, Christian, barely takes notice of her at first and then there's that stupid Tucker, who has way too much fun teasing her. Clara makes friends, discovers more about angel-bloods, and starts to feel conflicted about what she's supposed to do. When the time comes, will she choose to follow the fated path in front of her or make a path of her own?

For the H.Y.P.E. Project, I'm going to shake up my review format a little bit and see how I like it.

Characters

None of the characters are perfect and no one is trying to pass them off as such. Clara was a likable if sometimes self-centered heroine and she made a good narrator. Her mom Margaret was a different story, but I understood why she acted the way she did and wouldn't tell Clara anything. Making me sympathize with a character I don't like really takes skill. Other supporting characters, like love interest Tucker and close friend Angela, had likable personalities too. Christian was a little plain for me and Kay, though she wasn't anywhere close to being a stock character, had some elements of the "mean girl love rival" cliche in her. (And don't think I didn't notice the puntastic names. I did.)

Pacing/Plot

I'll admit that at times, I had to force myself to keep reading because there wasn't much happening. The pacing was slowed down to make some time for development and that wonderful development is enough to make me forgive that flaw. Occasional visions and tidbits of angel-blood information kept me interested, the climax had me glued to my seat, and I did not see that ending coming. The change of making the girl the supernatural creature was nice and the plot itself was somewhat fresh.

Themes/Conflicts

Fate is one idea I love seeing be played with, but I'm a little picky on which books do it well and which books don't. Unearthly did a great job of it, raising the question of whether or not fate can be defied or changed. The tough choice between doing what you're supposed to do and what you want to do was good too, and Clara's conflict with that was played out well. Most of the time, books are overdramatic about it, but not this time. Love triangles are usually really obvious in who the girl is going to get with in the end and have little to no tension. Unearthly delivers here too; the reader can easily understand why she's torn.

Writing

Oh, the writing was lovely! I'm not a fan of present tense (but that's just a minor pet peeve), but it worked here. Descriptions managed to be rich without verging into the territory of purple prose. It even made me laugh! I may get silly and sometimes emotional when reviewing books, but it rarely happens when I'm still reading them. Not only was it good, nonrepetitive writing, but it was enjoyable storytelling too.

Logic

For the most part, the characters' decisions and reactions are perfectly logical and on-target. There wasn't a moment where I wanted to scream at them that they were being an idiot and should have chosen to do this, not that. And I appreciate that someone finally realized that unless they do something unusual, no one cares about new students. The mythology seemed to make sense too, but there was one little thing that bothered me. Why did the angel-bloods have only one purpose? Wouldn't it make more sense and be more efficient for angel-bloods to be given multiple purposes over their lifetime instead of just having one and being done? It seems so inefficient to have to bring another angel-blood into existence just to do one thing.

Was it worth the hype?

I'm glad to say that yes, Unearthly is worth its hype. The angel/fallen angel subgenre is notorious for offering some of the worst paranormal books I've ever seen published, but Unearthly has honestly earned its reputation it has as the best of the angel books. Coming from me, someone who ardently hates almost all books that have to do with angels and fallen angels, I hope my word means something. Now I actually have some hope for the subgenre--not much hope, but a little is better than none.

Bonus cover section

I'm not over-the-moon in love with the cover, but whoever put it together did a fantastic job. I would steal that model's dress in a heartbeat and her pose is perfect. The choice to make the background purple really makes the beautiful white font stand out, and it all blends together so well!

4 stars! What a wonderful way to start off what I'm sure will be a hellish project for me! This was the book I had the highest expectations for and it delivered.

What am I reading next?: Halo by Alexandra Adornetto (This is not going to be fun.)