Once you’ve seen, you can’t unsee.
Brielle went to the city to chase her dreams and found tragedy instead. She’s come home to shabby little Stratus, Oregon, to live with her grief and her guilt . . . and an incredible, numbing cold she can’t seem to shake.
Jake’s the new guy at school. The boy next door with burning hands and an unbelievable gift that targets him for corruption.
Something more than fate has brought them together. An evil bigger than both of them lurks in the shadows nearby, hiding in plain sight. Two angels stand guard, unsure what’s going to happen. And a beauty brighter than either Brielle or Jake has ever seen is calling them to join the battle in a realm where all human choices begin.
A realm that only angels and demons—and Brielle—can perceive.
I find I’ve been drawn to a lot of YA lately. When I saw the cover of Angel Eyes I was instantly intrigued. The story, happily, didn’t disappoint.
Brielle Matthews returns home a shattered, broken version of herself. She struggles to move forward in a world that seems pointless after the tragic death of her best friend, seemingly at the hands of the girl’s boyfriend. As Brielle settles back into small town life she encounters Jake, a new guy in town. Despite her grief, she feels instantly drawn to him, though she tries to resist at first.
Eventually she allows a friendship to bloom with Jake and their friendship grows into something much more. Brielle is exposed to a world much different than the world she thought was the only one that existed and realizes that she has a bigger role in life than she ever could have imagined.
I really enjoyed the pacing of the story once it finally began to progress. The beginning was a bit slow for my taste and I kept waiting for some answers to be given about Brielle’s state of health. She was to give testimony in the murder trial of her best friend but it was never really explained why until much later in the book. Nor was it explained why she felt so guilty about Ali’s death until almost the end. I would have appreciated a few more hints dribbled.
Once the story began picking up, essentially when Brielle discovers her gift, it was a roller coaster of action. While stories of angels and demons, heaven and hell, are familiar and sometimes cliched, I enjoyed the little twists in this story surrounding the origins of angel’s halos and how a halo comes to be so important to Brielle.
The only thing I didn’t really like was that Brielle’s portions of the story were told in first person and any other characters were in third. I think it would have been stronger to keep it all the same.
This story is also quite heavy in religious ideology and minor sermons, particularly at the end. I’m not a religious person and I could see how this could really bother particular people but for me I just skim over anything like that. You can’t have a story involving angels and demons battling for souls without scripture quotes after all. I understand the message the book is trying to say regarding religion but I didn’t find it so heavy that it took away from the story itself and for me that is key.
I give this book 3.5 out of 5 and I’m going to keep a lookout for the second book in this trilogy. I like the characters, I want to see where they will go.
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I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com <http://BookSneeze®.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
