3.5 Stars ( )

Angel Burn was a fun read. I liked it, although the romance took over midway and made eveything kind of, well, cheesy. Typical of these types of YA novels. Recommend for its.romance appeal and unique premise. ( )

Angel Burn was a fun read. I liked it, although the romance took over midway and made eveything kind of, well, cheesy. Typical of these types of YA novels. Recommend for its.romance appeal and unique premise. ( )

eAngel Burn by L.A. Weatherly.

Willow Fields is a junior in high school who is great at fixing a car and is psychic. She lives with her Aunt Jo and her mother in a small town named Pawntucket. She had gone to find a school mate, Beth, which she had done a reading on and found out about Angels, only to end up on the run with Angel Killer, Alex.

minor spoilers below

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book, but there were some minor cons.

I felt as if the book was too predictable and sometimes too cheesy at times. For example, when Raziel had said that the picture of Willow looked somewhat familiar, I had instantly known that Willow was his daughter. This could have been a great plot twist for the author to use to make readers shocked and the characters stunned as well.

The romance between Willow and Alex could have been better. Both Willow and Alex already had an attraction to each other from the moment they saw each other. When Alex had told Willow that he had liked her since breaking into her home had made me a bit confused as he was trained to 'detest' and view angels as the enemy. I would have enjoyed a bit of slow burn in this book to show the readers the struggle the characters in getting along when they were opposites.

The villain himself (Raziel) had no characteristics or depth and overall, was a boring character/villain. He had no real emotions or character traits and it seemed as if the author had put him in to let Willow and Alex spend time together hiding. It would have interested me if there was a story behind his character and if he wasn't all "find the girl. kill the girl."

The multiple POVs had not bothered me but it had made me annoyed a few times. I had really enjoyed the POV of Alex and Willow, it had an importance to the book as it described the conflicts our main characters faced but the POV of Raziel and sometimes Jonah wasn't really necessary and had seemed to act like 'filler chapters'. The information used in their POV's could have been used and manipulated by the author to create more suspense and to have the readers questioning and guessing.

Some things I had enjoyed about this book:

The idea of angel burn and angels feeding off of humans had fascinated me. Angels drained the energy of human beings to survive. Afterwards, the human would feel fatigued and tiredness wash over them but would believe that the angels were helping them. If a human had been fed on too much, illness or disease such as cancer would slowly form. The idea was very creative/fresh and I thought that it was well explained in the book.

Willow was a good female lead and had a character development. Usually, in YA novels, I can't seem to stand the protagonist because they had no characteristics, but I felt as if Willow was a well-balanced character who I was able to relate with. When learning that she was half-angel, Willow had been terrified of herself and she had a lot of fears, but at the near end of the book, she had accepted her angel and became selfless and brave. It was a joy to read her struggles and how she had matured as the story progressed.

The scene between Willow, Alex, and Cullen was probably one of my favourite scenes. It showed the struggle Alex was facing when he had already lost so many loved ones and it showed how much he has grown from 'disliking' Willow to protecting her at all cost. It had me anxious and on the edge of my seat when I was reading.

The storyline was well written with detail. The author had put small details in the story to make it likeable. Such as using Willow using her mechanic skills for when their car had run down. It was a joy for me as a reader to see the author still incorporate something from her 'past' life. There was a good amount of fantasy, romance, and sadness in the book and I thought it had evened out.

In the end, I rate this story 4/5 stars. It was an enjoyable YA novel that had romance, fantasy, and adventure. ( )

FIRST READ: July 24, 2012
This is seriously one of the most amazing books I’ve read in a long time. Of course, most of the books I read are amazing, but this one stands out.
Tell me if you’ve heard this one: a boy who’s an angel hunter meets a half-angel girl and they inevitably fall in absolute, so-sappy-it-makes-me-sick love.
Now tell me if you’ve heard this one: Angels are bad guys. And not even fallen angels; just your run-of-the-mill, average Joe, un-fallen angel.
Yep. I had to love this book. It was fate.
Any fans of Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments will note a familiar name: Raziel. But instead of the beneficent creator of the shadow hunters, he’s the arrogant leader of a new evil angel empire here on earth. Only thing he has in common with Raziel from TMI is he helped create Nephilim. Except, in this book, they haven't discovered the term Nephilim, so they just call her a half-angel.
Speaking of TMI, since we all know it’s impossible for me to choose just ONE favorite book of all time, I do have a system where I choose my favorite book (series) within a certain genre. The half-angel genre is currently ranked so:

Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick
Angel Burn by L.A. Weatherly
Unearthly by Cynthia Hand
Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare

And I’m telling you, Alex and Willow ore seriously working on nudging Patch and Nora out of their long-time throne.
By the time I finish Angel Fire, who knows?
Anyway, I love this book and firmly believe it should be read while listening to Breaking Benjamin, Linkin Park, and Disturbed.
I feel it’s only fair to inform you that this book is told half in first-person (Willow’s POV) and half in third person (Alex, Raziel, and Jonah’s POV’s) I didn’t fid it at all confusing, though, it rather made a lot of sense.

Now, for some of my fave quotes:

Though he’s hardly even touched Willow, he didn’t think he’s ever be able to forget her face, no matter what happened to him.

He was just comparing Willow to a bunch of one-night stands he had with girls whom he can’t even remember what looked like.
Aww.

She was half angel.
Alex let out a breath. God, what did that even mean?

That means any kids the two of you might have will be quarter-angel, duh.

And now she was a thousand miles away from her home and might never see her mother again… with only some guy she hated for company.

Some guy whom she met while they were escaping a mob after he’d been sent to kill her, no less.
And still gorgeous.

I was in love with him.

Well, you don’t get much more obvious than that, do you? Personally, I hate it when this happens in a book and the character just announces “I’m in love with him!” by that point in the story, we can usually already tell.
Take Sydney and Adrian from Bloodlines for instance. At the end of the Golden Lily, they are so in love and everyone knows it despite Sydney insisting that she’s not, cuz she can’t be in love with him because he’s *gasp* a vampire! (Sydney’s totally in love with him. There’s no use denying it. Everyone knows.)
Same situation here. We already know she’s in love with him. When you just say it like that, it’s kind of redundant.

And I thought—even if he’s never going to feel the same way I do, it doesn’t matter. I still want to be with him.
I never wanted to be without him.

Okay, see, I’d’ve liked this as her declaration of “I love Alex” better. Is it still redundant? Yes, especially since this is essentially Alex’s “I love Willow” declaration nearly word for word, but it better than just saying “I love him.”
Also, um, Willow? I’m not sure if you’re just unobservant or something, but he does feel the same way. He feels the same way a lot.

No matter how human I felt when I was with Alex, I wasn’t. It wasn’t a boy with a girl; it was a boy with something not human.

Jeez, Willow, you’re really bringing me down here. it’s a happy moment, but you have to go and complain about being part monster.
But this is one of things that makes this series stand out so much. In some series being half-angel is annoying when butts into your love life (Unearthly), sometimes it makes you badass (Mortal Instruments), sometimes it’s just plain dangerous and makes people want to kill you (Hush, Hush) but this is the first book where it’s been a BAD thing because you’re related to an angel, and angels are BAD people.

But just then, it was Alex I was crying for. All that he’d been through, all those deaths of people he loved—and now he was having to experience it again, with me. thinking of what he was going through was like being beat up inside; it was even worse than imagining whatever might happen the next day.

I kind of love that this insight into Alex’s character comes from Willow’s pov, not his. But at the same time, I’m saying:
Bull SHIT, Willow. You’re going off to your possible death, and no matter what pain he’s gone through, no matter what excuse he might have for feeling the way he does about it, gives him NO EXCUSE to act the way he did to you.
No freaking excuse, I tell you.

One last quote:
Sadness touched me as I thought of the cabin—all the hours we’d spent there, playing cards, holding each other. But it was only a place; it wasn’t important. The important thing was being together.

I love this realization. “It was only a place; it wasn’t important” touched my heart. I think that this is probably one of the most beautiful things I’ve read, ever.

And with that, I leave you.

( )