Author:
Susan Ee
Publisher:
Feral Dream
Pages: 283
Genre: Young
Adult, Paranormal, Dystopian, Romance, Fantasy
Rating:
3.5/5
It has been
6 weeks since the angels have taken over. 6 weeks of living in constant danger.
Penryn
Young’s whole life has changed. Instead of planning for college years, she’s
desperately protecting her family from the dark creatures that have taken over
her world. But things haven’t stabilized yet: her life is tossed once again
into confusion when she witnesses a fight between angels which results in an
injured angel left behind and her sister, Paige, kidnapped. Now the only thing Penryn
can do is help the wingless angel in hopes that he’ll be able to help rescue
Paige.
Raffe was
always the strongest of the angels. But when he finds himself on the verge of
death, he can do nothing but accept a strange girl’s help. Now Penryn and Raffe
have one thing in mind – attack the angel headquarters. But even though they
share the same goal, they both have different motives. With Penryn aching for
her sister and Raffe yearning for his wings, the two must fight together if
they have any chance of succeeding – or even surviving.
Even though
the whole story was centered on Penryn’s travels, Raffe was my favorite
character. For one, he was kind and caring. In the beginning it seemed as if he
had a hard outer shell but as the book progressed, I was able to learn more
about Raffe. Another thing is, though this might sound cheesy, Raffe is a hero. Plain and simple. Rescuing Paige
and saving her from harm really helped build up his character. I’m all for a
girl fighting for herself, but good ol’ fashioned gallantry never gets old and is
quite charming. And to top it off, it doesn’t really hurt that Raffe’s gorgeous.
He’s tall, handsome and has wings –
or is trying to get them back anyways. With all these characteristics and more,
Raffe was definitely a character I had fun reading about.
Then there
was Penryn. She did have her moments, but most of the time I was annoyed with
her. Some of the decisions she made just seemed so infuriatingly stupid. As in, nobody in their right mind would
actually make those decisions. And it isn’t as if it’s only this heroine who
makes these stupid mistakes. No, Penryn is just one of those ditzy girls who
makes stupid choices. But despite this flaw, she was a well-built character: she
had a great backstory, had a (somewhat working) ability to differentiate
between the right and wrong thing to do, and her cunning wit, or lack of, was
absolutely hilarious to read. But, in the end, Susan Ee could have definitely
made Penryn’s character pop a bit more.
Now on to
the actual book. So, when I first read the summary I wasn’t that excited. Sure,
a bit of me was intrigued, but there was an overwhelming groan of
disappointment: there didn’t seem to be anything special about this book!! Yet,
as I continued to read, I was continuously surprised by how exceptional the
plot and writing was. There was a captivating adventure, romance, and (as
described above) interesting characters.
Reading
about Raffe and Penryn’s ventures was quite interesting. The 283 pages in this
book were chock filled with different activities the two did. Seeing how the
two travelled to their final destination and how much they had changed in the
short amount of time was astounding. But there was more than one lull in the
book where I had to skip a few pages because I was completely and utterly
bored. The problem was that the author kept going on and on about the most
pointless of details. There was a lot of futile information, which could have
been replaced with more relevant details.
But on the
other hand, I loved the romance plot. Sure it was more than a bit clichéd, but
I thought it worked pretty well that Raffe was unable to get involved with
Penryn because she was a “Daughter of Man”. Besides that, the two of them had a
great chemistry. One part of the romance plot that I greatly enjoyed was that
it never stopped building. In fact the climax of the love story was at the end,
which created an amazing cliffhanger for what was to happen in the next book.
All in all,
‘Angelfall’ was a read I won’t
regret. Filled with adventure, romance and wings, this book is definitely one
of the more interesting ones I’ve read in a while. I recommend this book for
teenagers 14+ mainly because of the gore and romance in this book. If you like
young adult, romance or any dystopian novels, this is one you will want to try
out. Don’t miss the second book ‘World
After’ and the third book in this series which is expected to be released
in 2015.
