Review- Angelfall

I know I've done a mini review for this book, but it deserved more. Here it is.

 Angelfall. Where have you been all my life? This book has left me speechless. It ties for the best book of 2012. I don’t care that it came out in 2011, it is clearly transcendent.

 

Despite its focus on angels, the premise is highly original. Recently, angels have inundated the reading waves, but these books have been nothing like Angelfall. This book breaks the mold.

 

When the story begins it has been 6 weeks since Angels have disseminated the world—only pockets of humanity remain. 16 year old Penryn is responsible for her disabled sister and her schizophrenic mother. During her attempt to move her family to a secure location, they end up in the middle of a fight amongst angels, resulting in her sister being kidnapped. To save her sister’s life Penryn has to make a deal with an Angel, Rafael.

An angel who has recently lost his wings, Raffe is only concerned about himself. He has never cared too much for humans, but Penryn has offered to help him find someone who can sew his wings back on. In exchange, he will take her to where her sister is being kept.

Together they forge an unlikely bond as they travel across the deserted Silicon Valley streets heading to the Angel headquarters in San Francisco. Along the way they are attacked by a gang, captured and held hostage, but together they escape and head to the final showdown between Rafael and the Angels.

In the end, nothing is the way you would have hoped, but the characters have grown so much and there are interesting twists and subplots that come to a successful conclusion.     

 

This book has everything.

 
1) A really original plot, that had me perched on the edge of my seat for the 6 hours it took me to read it. There was even a creepy subplot about children who have been reconstructed into evil killing machines, that made the hairs on my neck stand up.

 
2) An amazing heroine who doesn’t whine or complain, but does what she has to do, to save her family.  Too often in YA books, the heroine dissolves into a ball of tears the instant her nails break.

 

3) An amazing Angel, Raffe, who is the ultimate definition of swoon worthy.  No insta-love, but a romance that hummed along right beneath the surface, which left me wondering if the characters felt it too.

 

4) And a creepy setting that heightened the book’s overall tension.  Having grown up around the area that the book takes place it was surreal to hear about it being so desolate. The author uses amazing descriptions and Imagery to make the setting seem so vivid.  The writing truly conveyed the wasteland that the Bay Area had become, which made the story more real, and less a work of fiction.    

 

This book was an amazing start to what will hopefully be a successful series.