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Book Review of Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days, Book 1)

Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days, Book 1)
stef140 avatar reviewed on + 28 more book reviews


** spoiler alert ** Given the overwhelming flood of high ratings and reviews for this, as well as the exciting premise of the novel, I really really wanted to fall in love with this book. In fact I really really tried to fall in love with it! But I just couldn't do it. But let me start with the good...

This is a good representation of angels, I was impressed. I am tired of books where angels are perfect, benevolent and sit on clouds watching over human beings. It's clear this author has at least read a few Bible verses about angels, and accurately portrays them as God's warriors. And she knew the names of the archangels, fantastic! The story starts off really well, angels have decimated the world in a few short weeks and no one is quite sure why. But they certainly aren't going to come out of the shadows to ask them.

Enter Penryn, who is thrown into this mess when she witnesses an angel being butchered by one of his own kind. When she steps into his aid, his companions kidnap her handicapped sister. She then decides to kidnap this injured angel and demand that he help her find her sister. This is a good premise, it intrigued me and I wanted to know more. But unfortunately that is about where the good parts ended...

I was very frustrated by the lack of answers in this book. For example, how did Penryn's sister become paralyzed? It is suggested that their mother did it, but we never really get answers about that. Like, if her mother did do this why wasn't she prosecuted? Why did she still have her children?

Was there supposed to be a romantic angel between Raffe and Penryn? Because I didn't buy it in the least. They spent most of the book saying and acting like they really couldn't stand each other. Then all of a sudden at the end of the book they have feelings for each other? When did that happen? When was that explained? Because I certainly never saw it!

If you're going to throw a curveball into the ending of the book, at least have it make sense. This one had one curveball that came straight out of loony-ville and was never explained and really never amounted to anything. The other curveball was a little bit more expected, but again it never really went anywhere or was explained. That frustrated me. The ending of a book is supposed to make me want to read the next book, this didn't. It left me on a cliffhanger, but I don't really care what comes next because it just made so little sense.

Ultimately it was a worthy attempt, but I just couldn't find myself enjoying it as much as I hoped I would.