Review: Angel by L.A. Weatherly (Angel #1)

Publisher - Usborne
Publication Date - 1st October 2010
Paperback - 506 pages
Genre - Young Adult/Paranormal Romance

Source - Library

Rating - 4 out of 5: I really liked it!



Book Info - Angels are all around us: beautiful, awe-inspiring, irresistible. Ordinary mortals yearn to catch a glimpse of one of these stunning beings and thousands flock to The Church of Angels to feel their healing touch. But what if their potent magnetism isn't what it seems?

Willow knows she's different from other girls. And not just because she loves tinkering around with cars.
Willow has a gift. She can look into people's futures, know their dreams, their hopes and their regrets, just by touching them. But she has no idea where she gets this power from.

Until she meets Alex…
Alex is one of the few who know the truth about angels. He knows Willow's secret and is on a mission to stop her. The dark forces within Willow make her dangerous – and irresistible. In spite of himself, Alex finds he is falling in love with his sworn enemy.

My Thoughts - In this book angels are the bad guys who have come to earth to feed off of the life energy of humans. It is because of the angels that humans suffer from things like cancer and mental illness. For me, this was an entirely new take on the angel genre that made it stand out as a unique and completely engaging read.

I fell in love with both of the main characters from the start. Willow is a young girl who has never really fit in well with her peers due to her skills as a mechanic and her psychic abilities. Her world begins to fall apart when she realises that these predatory angels walk among humans every day, and that she is in fact half-angel, half-human. But Willow shows an amazing strength of character as she comes to understand this other side to herself that she initially hates.

Alex is an Angel Killer who has been hunting angels ever since he was twelve. Despite his young age he has lost a lot of people that he loves and at times this pain emanates from the page like a living thing. But he has somehow managed to overcome all of this loss to become a caring and compassionate young man. Alex is quite possibly my favourite YA male character.

The romance element between Willow and Alex is incredibly sweet. They work well together as a couple and, although at first they find their differences hard to work around, after a while they come to accept each other completely.

The slow pace of the romance is offset by the fast pace of the action and mystery elements of the novel. Apart from a couple of slow points when Alex and Willow are in hiding, Angel kept me completely gripped and I had real difficulty putting it down once I had started reading the book.

There are  a lot of surprises throughout the course of Angel and, with the exception of one minor plot point that I guessed at about halfway through the novel, the ending was a complete surprise to me.

Summary - I absolutely loved Angel, with its complex characters and combination of unique plot, mystery and romance. I am really excited about reading Angel Fire and this has got to be one of my favourite YA books ever!

Other books in the series:
1. Angel
2. Angel Fire

Other reviews of this book:
About Happy Books / Dear Author / Feeling Fictional / Girls Without a Bookshelf /

It's Monday! What are you Reading? (9th January 2012)

This is a weekly meme hosted by Book Journey that gives us all a chance to list the books that we read last week and what we hope to read this week.


Books Completed:
Virals by Kathy Reichs (Virals #1)
The Icebound Land by John Flanagan (Ranger's Apprentice #3)


Books Reviewed:
Hellsbane by Paige Cuccaro (Hellsbane #1)
Four to Score/High Five/Hot Six by Janet Evanovich (Stephanie Plum #4/5/6)


Books I'm Currently Reading:
Heart of the Incubus by Rosalie Lario (Demons of Infernum #4)


Books Up Next:
Seizure by Kathy Reichs (Virals #2)


Also, I'm still on the lookout for bloggers/authors who would like to write a guest post for my special paranormal romance event in February. If you are a fan of the genre and would like to get involved then please see my post here.

Series of the Week: Downside Series by Stacia Kane

Each Sunday I will be highlighting a series that I have been wanting to read for a while, and that I hope to read very soon! This week my pick is the Downside Series by Stacia Kane! I've heard so many good things about this series and I really can't wait to make a start on it... and hopefully soon!


Have you read this series? Let me know what you thought!

Unholy Ghosts
The world is not the way it was. The dead have risen and constantly attack the living. The powerful Church of Real Truth, in charge since the government fell, has sworn to reimburse citizens being harassed by the deceased. Consequently, there are many false claims of hauntings from those hoping to profit.

Enter Chess Putnam, a fully-tattooed witch and freewheeling Debunker and ghost hunter. She's got a real talent for nailing the human liars or banishing the wicked dead. But she's keeping a dark secret from the Church: a little drug problem that's landed her in hot and dangerous water.

Chess owes a murderous drug lord named Bump a lot of money. And Bump wants immediate payback. All Chess has to do is dispatch a very nasty species of undead from an old airport. But the job involves black magic, human sacrifice, a nefarious demonic creature, and crossing swords with enough wicked energy to wipe out a city of souls. Toss in lust with a rival gang leader and a dangerous attraction to Bump's ruthless enforcer, and Chess begins to wonder if the rush is really worth it. Hell, yeah.

Unholy Magic

Chess is a fiercely independent witch and talented Debunker - working for the Church of Real Truth to exorcise ghosts and expose human liars. But she has a dark little secret that is causing her a lot of problems… a drug addiction.

Trying to catch a spectral serial killer with a fondness for his victims’ eyes is distracting Chess from her day job, and her growing attraction to Terrible is making things worse.

Life is getting too complicated and Chess must break the rules to keep her head above water.

City of Ghosts

Rogue spirits and psychopomps are terrorising people, and now someone is planning to open the gates to the City of Ghosts and unleash the dead on humanity.

Faced with her greatest challenge yet, Chess has to travel to the spirit city to finally lay all her ghosts to rest…

Review: Four to Score/High Five/Hot Six by Janet Evanovich (Stephanie Plum #4,5 &6)

Four to Score (My Rating - 3 out of 5: I liked it)
The problem with being a bounty hunter is it's all on-the-job training. And Stephanie Plum is still learning the ways to get yourself killed. Take the case of Maxine Norwicki....
When Maxine failed to turn up for her day in court, Stephanie was given the task of bringing her in. Simple. Except Maxine's boyfriend has now begun receiving mysterious, coded notes from the runaway that hint at buried treasure. In fact the notes are so indecipherable that Stephanie has to call on the help of Sally Sweet, giant drag queen and code-breaker extraordinaire.
And Steph's knight errant, cop Joe Morelli. is also proving useful - although he can't decide what he wants most: Maxine's bounty or Stephanie's body. Meanwhile a friend loses a finger, a mother is scalped, an apartment is firebombed and a store clerk is murdered. And out in the street, the crazy treasure hunt game goes on....

High Five (My Rating - 3 out of 5: I liked it)
Stephanie Plum has a whole lot of trouble on her doorsteps. Her Uncle Fred has disappeared and Grandma Mazur is convinced he's been abducted by aliens. Meanwhile, cousin Vinnie has asked her to bring in the vertically challenged Randy Briggs who's jumped bail. But instead of coming quietly, he has taken up residence in Stephanie's closet. The mysterious man called Bunchy is trailing Stephanie in the hope of tracking down Fred. And Benito Ramirez is back from jail, quoting Scripture and vowing to introduce Stephanie to God - face to face. Thankfully Joe Morelli, the irresistible cop, is still around to give her the odd sleepless night - through now he faces tough competition from the enigmatic Ranger...

Hot Six (My Rating - 3 out of 5: I liked it)
First there's fellow bounty hunter Ranger, currently on the run from a murder rap and requesting Stephanie's help. Trouble is she can't decide if she should turn him in or keep him for herself. Then there's sexy vice cop Joe Morelli - the man her heart says she's in love with (even though her head says otherwise). He's after Ranger too - but for less romantic reasons...
And now there's another male in her life. He's big, he's orange, and he howls when he's left alone. Sexual temptation, homicidal maniacs, car crashes and doughnut addiction are all part of Stephanie Plum's daily routine. But all that pales into insignificance when Grandma Mazur moves in...

My Thoughts - In books 4, 5 and 6 of the Stephanie Plum series, the author has managed to deliver the things that I loved about the first three books in the series - mystery, humour and romance. Although I felt that High Five was missing out on a lot of the humour that I have come to expect from Ms. Evanovich, Four to Score and Hot Six were still completely hilarious and had me in tears of laughter.

Most of this humour comes from the crazy situations that Stephanie manages to find herself in as a Bounty Hunter, but there are also a lot of laugh out loud moments provided by her family. They are all complete nut-cases and I would give pretty much anything to be a fly on the wall in the Plum household. The author's biggest strength is definitely in creating characters who the reader can grow to love, whilst making them completely hilarious at the same time.

As in the first three books there are a huge number of supporting characters which did, at times, confuse me and make me have to read back over pages as I tried to remember who was who. Each time there is always a lot of leads/witnesses/suspects and I think this is done to provide plenty of red herrings to stop the reader from guessing who is behind the crimes. However, I still always managed to guess from quite early on who was responsible.

Stephanie is still in the will they/won't they romantic situation with Joe Morelli, which I absolutely love. I really enjoy reading about the chemistry between these two and trying to work out if they will ever get together properly. But in these books Ranger also comes into play as a possible love interest for Stephanie and we start to find out more about him. At first, I wasn't sure if I liked this turn of events - I liked him as a mysterious character in the background - but the more I found out about him the sexier he became! I am looking forward to reading more about this love triangle in the future.

Summary - More light-hearted fun from the queen of humourous mysteries. The Stephanie Plum books are a great way to pass the time and are a fun escape from reality for the reader.

Other books in the series:
1. One for the Money
2. Two for the Dough
3. Three to get Deadly
4. Four to Score
5. High Five
6. Hot Six
7. Seven Up
8. Hard Eight
9. To the Nines
10. Ten Big Ones
11. Eleven on Top
12. Twelve Sharp
13. Lean Mean Thirteen
14. Fearless Fourteen
15. Finger Lickin' Fifteen
16. Sizzling Sixteen
17. Smokin' Seventeen
18. Explosive Eighteen

Waiting on Wednesday: Grave Dance

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

The book that I have picked today was released in the US a while ago but isn't being released here in the UK until next month. And this week my choice is:

Grave Dance by Kalayna Price(Alex Craft #2)
"Memories hid in every cell of the body. Memories that my grave magic could unlock and give shape as a shade. Of course, that depended on having enough of the body at my disposal for my magic to fill in the gaps."

After a month spent recovering from a vicious fight with a sorcerer, Grave Witch Alex Craft is ready to get back to solving murders by raising the dead. With her love life in turmoil thanks to the disappearance of FBI agent Falin Andrews and Death's shocking 'L word' confession, Alex is eager for the distractions of work. But her new case turns out to be more of a challenge than she was expecting.

The police hire Alex to consult on a particularly strange investigation in a nature preserve. The strange part? There are no bodies, just leftover pieces. With a probable serial killer on the loose and no way to raise a shade without a body, Alex will have to rely solely on her ability to sense the grave to lead her to the dead. But with the strain of overusing her magic, this might be the last case Alex ever solves...