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Halo by Alexandra Adornetto (view source)
Revision as of 12:52, 1 September 2020
, 12:52, 1 September 2020no edit summary
When three angels – Gabriel, Ivy and Bethany – arrive in a quiet town, their mission is to bring good to a world in danger of falling into darkness. They have to conceal their true nature – hiding the glow of their skin, their wings – a task not easy for Bethany, the least experienced of the trio. She's overwhelmed by human life, fascinated by all the experiences available to her in human form. A fascination that leads to a dangerous attraction to human boy, Xavier. Falling in love was not part of the holy mission, and Gabriel and Ivy fear Bethany won't be in the position to save anybody if she continues down the path she's on.
This book is a clear example of why we have the saying 'Don't judge a book by its cover.' The cover is exquisite. The story… not so much.
''Halo'' starts with newly incarnate angel Bethany getting used to her life on Earth. I loved this bit of the story – it was well observed, well written and spoke of great promise for the rest of the book. However, when the story (and I say 'story ' in the loosest sense of the word) kicked in, Halo went from intriguing to banal in about three lines.
Why would an angel go to high school? It's never really explained beyond 'fitting in' and Beth seems to be as unclear on her purpose as I was reading it, which didn't help matters either. The fact that she wasn't targeting vulnerable, impressionable teenagers for a bit of the good will goodwill treatment made the whole situation ridiculous. Instead, Beth spends her time swooning over Xavier, while her friends swoon over Gabriel. Now, a bit of boy swooning is fine, but ''Halo'' is a chunky book. Swooning can't sustain 400+ pages.
Bethany's innocence, intended to be cute, I think, got annoying very rapidly – especially as she's an angel and supposed to know everything in human knowledge. Surely she'd know the effects of alcohol? For a superpowered angel, Beth was at best vulnerable and in need of a knight in shining armour, at worst a pathetic sap about as endearing as a mouldy potato.