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 /