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On a Dark Wing (Harlequin Teen)

by Jordan Dane

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6517402,564 (3.34)None
Young Adult Fiction. HTML:

The choices I had made led to the moment when fate took over. I would learn a lesson I wasn't prepared for. And Death would be my willing teacher.

Five years ago, Abbey Chandler cheated Death. She survived a horrific car accident, but her "lucky" break came at the expense of her mother's life and changed everything. After she crossed paths with Death--by taking the hand of an ethereal boy made of clouds and sky--she would never be normal again.

Now she's the target of Death's ravens and an innocent boy's life is on the line. When Nate Holden--Abbey's secret crush--starts to climb Alaska's Denali, the Angel of Death stalks him because of her.

And Abbey finds out the hard way that Death never forgets.
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"4 out of 5 stars, this novel is thought provoking and has a unique take on dealing with near death experiences. When I first started this novel, I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy it, as it starts out very dark, gloomy, and it wasn't what I expected at all. Nevertheless..."

Read more of this review and TWO TEASERS here: http://frommetoyouvideophoto.blogspot.com/2011/12/blog-tour-review-feasted-on-on... ( )
  fromjesstoyou | Mar 21, 2016 |
This is the second book I've read by Jordan Dane and she is fast becoming one of my favorite new authors. I love her writing style & her character development is amazing. You know who these characters are right away, something I always appreciate. She also creates diverse & unconventional main characters. In this story, one of the main characters is in a wheelchair, but he's definitely no victim. Just a normal teen who happens to be in a wheelchair. With the two YA books I've read by Jordan Dane, she combines a fantastic coming of age story with a touch of paranormal to create an unforgettable story. I encourage everyone who likes YA to read this (as well as In the Arms of Stone Angels). ( )
  Kelly_Mills | Dec 12, 2014 |
I'm torn. There are some brilliant aspects to this book but it was dreadfully slow. I dragged myself through because after figuring out the Meet Joe Black angle I was curious to know if it would end the same way. It didn't. Actually, it took an unexpected yet not unwelcome turn that may not be liked by the masses.

Abbey is excellently portrayed. Her predicament: the ever-present crushing guilt over her mother's death, the growing distance between her and her father, and her misplaced obsession with Nate (the jock who has an obsession of his own with mountain climbing) resulting from her inability to deal with her guilt, wallowing in it instead of moving on with her life. So she imagines this fictitious romantic relationship with him to help her deal with reality. It comforts her. Yes, it's sort of creepy. She was one step away from becoming a full-on stalker but I understood her crush and empathised.

Her only company was her best friend Tanner but she hadn't revealed much about her mother's death and how she felt about it to him. He had his own hang-ups. He'd also been in a tragic accident but he hadn't been so lucky; he was paralysed from the waist down and in a wheelchair. I enjoyed reading Tanner's POV, witnessing how he was treated by others, how his relationships had suffered and the difference in how Abbey treats him. Without pity. She understands how it is for him without even asking.

'Being loners might have drawn us together out of necessity, but it was our friendship that had made us strong enough to come out the other side.'

Kind of reminds me of [b:The Dream-Maker's Magic|97968|The Dream-Maker's Magic (Safe-Keepers, #3)|Sharon Shinn|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1309198262s/97968.jpg|1247755].

The story is all about Abbey's transition. Realising that she's tired of being unhappy, of pretending, lying and hiding. She wants to live. It's a great message and I liked the method in which it was conveyed, reminiscent of [b:Riders of the Apocalypse|7247856|Hunger (Riders of the Apocalypse, #1)|Jackie Morse Kessler|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1269038726s/7247856.jpg|7134137]. Love, and the selfish versus the altruistic needs, wants and decisions we make based on that love were also expertly demonstrated. FYI, love's a bitch.

"Dealing with guilt and grief doesn't leave much room for anything else. I know about that dark stuff, but one day if you're really lucky, you get tired of feeling bad all the time. It's like a curtain opens and light comes in. First, it's only a sliver. Then more."


However, it's not all smooth sailing. Besides being slow I really struggled to remain interested whenever we joined Nate's dangerous climb up the mountain. Since seeing Cliffhanger as a child I never even contemplated doing something so unnecessarily hazardous. Rescue teams must love those guys. Anyway, when the Angel of Death does his Joe Black thing to Nate I cringed at his interactions with Abbey. Perhaps it was realistic given her crush but the way she sort of accepted not-Nate's behaviour was uncomfortable to read. I wanted her to push harder when she called him on it, which would've sped up proceedings.

Death had been dealt a bum hand, poor guy. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. As powerful as he was he couldn't control everything and he wasn't perfect. He made mistakes. The mythology surrounding Death was intriguing. He's sort of a swallower of souls, holding them inside him for safe-keeping until the day he's the last one to die. But each soul changes him, for better or worse and this is what prompts him to make contact with Abbey. The ravens were a nice touch -suitably eerie.

As for the romance, well this is tricky. How much to say? There are three potential boyfriends, I guess. One from Abbey's past, her present and future. And the most obvious is not the guy Abbey chooses, and I'm glad of this. Some might not be pleased but just this one aspect makes On a Dark Wing unique, for multiple reasons. The resolution at end was well done. I can definitely see people reacting in that manner to such an extraordinary situation although the lead-up to the climax was a little ludicrous.

Would I recommend this to anyone? Well, I didn't hate this book and I wouldn't dissuade anyone from reading it. In fact, I might warn them it's slow but I'd encourage them to read to the end because I think the effort just might be worth it.


***Thank you to Harlequin Teen for providing me with this ebook.*** ( )
  Cynical_Ames | Sep 23, 2014 |
Cheating death but not the reader

The idea that fate and death can be manipulated has haunted mankind for millennia. The Ancient Greeks, seeing death as inevitable, did not portray him as evil but represented by a bearded and winged angel or sometimes a young boy.

That Death is more than a biological event forms the basis for ON A DARK WING, the latest book from Jordan Dane and her second Young Adult novel.

“Death would be my willing teacher,” reflects Abbey Chandler, thinking back on the death of her Mother five years before in a terrible car accident for which Abbey feels responsible.She survived whilst her Mother did not and she pays the price every day with guilt.In between her thoughts of guilt we follow Abbey’s obsession with Nate Holden—a boy who doesn’t know she exists.

Each year, as homage to Abbey’s Mother, her Father takes them to their holiday cabin in the wilderness. This year Abbey doesn’t want to go.She wants to stay with her paraplegic friend, Tanner Lange, and follow Nate’s latest expedition on Tanner’s broadband radio.But go to the Cabin she must, with all her teenage rebellion and the still smoldering anger at losing her Mother, on full throttle.

When Nate starts to climb Alaska's Denali, with his experienced mountain climbing Father and a close friend, he cannot realise his fate is intertwined with Abbey’s long ago brush with death.

The story moves back and forth between Nate, and his drama unfolding on the mountain, and Abbey, thousands of miles away, pining for him. Dane brings these two young people together in a surprising twist that finds Abbey in a desperate struggle to save Nate.The page-turning pace increases until we ultimately discover what really happened on that fateful day of the car accident five years ago.

Although, this book appears to be a romance at the outset, it is more an entry into the question posed by so many writers: “What are the repercussions of cheating death?”In the case of ON A DARK WING, the answer is frightening and a little heart-breaking and a page turning read.

Visit http://anadventureinreading.blogspot.com.au/ for more reviews & author interviews. ( )
  SusanMayWriter | Oct 1, 2013 |
On A Dark Wing is obviously eye-catching and interesting novel, just judging by looks alone: from the vaguely foreboding tone of the title itself to the scattered murder of ravens across the letters of the title, and the ominious, "Death never forgets. . . " ominously taglined in front of the Grim Reaper, this is a hard to miss title. It's a readable book that veers from normal to supernatural to creepy thriller almost: one thing that can be honestly said about On A Dark Wing is that it is never predictable. This is the story of a girl named Abbey, yes like Abbey Road of Beatles fame, her obsessive crush, her mom, a paralyzed but lovable hacker and Death. Yes, Death with a capital "D" - the Man himself appears and is the crux around which the rest of the book - and characters - must revolve.

Abbey is from Palmer, Alaska. It's immediately clear that miss Chandler is fairly damaged goods: her guilt and issues over her mom's death is immediate and obvious from the get-go. I had to shave off rating points for such a heavy-handed introduction: I like when the author eases the problems in so it's not overwhelming every page. She's also constantly around death: her dad runs a crematorium so death and dying are more personal and familiar to Abbey than most people. By page thirty, Abbey has begun obsessively regaling the reader with her obsession with a boy named Nate. From the way Abbey talks and acts, it's obvious her feelings veer into stalker territory: she plans openly, without any kind of embarrassment, to radio-eavesspydrop on a trip of Nate's that he doesn't even know she knows he is going on, not to mention the tiny fact that Nate has no idea who Abbey is. It's fairly uncomfortable to read Abbey waxing lyrical over a guy who literally couldn't pick her out of a line-up. I mean saving, "Nate, give me strength" when in a bad situation? Just.. what? Who does that? I certainly wanted to like Abbey - I definitely came closer the closer to the end that I got in the book and she grows up quite a bit- but her stalker tendencies, coupled with her piss-poor treatment of her father made it nearly impossible for much of the novel.

Other than Abbey, there is of course, Nate himself. I felt no real connection with Nate as an individual character, nor is it apparent for a while why we are supposed to care about a random boy going on a trip for the first few chapters. Nate is far too generic, too perfect for me to really buy into: I want a flawed man over a too-good-to-be-true archetype any day. His plot-line, though I liked how it intersected with Abbey's eventually, just failed to garner my interest from the start. Even his scenes on Denali failed to catch my eye - they were too bland and encompassing to create much emotion. I was much more interested in the paralyzed, funny and smart Tanner Lange than Nate. He is a much more flawed, real character than Nate, and carried the pages he appeared upon. Even when I found his cooperation with Abbey's stalker plans to be bemusing, I liked him immensely. He doesn't rag on Abbey for substituting food for love, he doesn't constantly rehash her guilt over her mother, he's just a best friend: supportive, loving, kind, there when he is needed the most.

The random shifts in POV, from Abbey's personal and most often-used first person to the third-person omniscient for any other (Nate, Jackie, Tanner, Bob) were very very annoying. I'd have prefered it all be first person: Abbey, Nate, Tanner, everyone, or all third person. It's disconcerting and just weird to be in a characters head one minute and passive observer for another the next. I also felt that some POVs visited, like those of Jackie, were needless filler instead of advancing the plot further. I would've taken more action/adventure and less insight if that was the trade-off there. It's also worth noting for me, an admitted over-hyphenator and enthusiastic parenthesis user, that Miss Dane uses ellipses a lot . . in her writing. . . for stress. I can understand the urge: it's a useful tool to convey stress and importance or hesitance, but it was way way overdone.

Using Death as a character seems like a fairly risky gamble for a writer. It's hard to create empathy and sympathy for such a feared and unknown and unknowable force, but like Markus Zusak's triumphamt The Book Thief, (admittedly to a much, much lesser extent) On A Dark Wing makes its Death.. human, if not exactly humane. Touched by Abbey's tragic past, this world's version of Death seeks to experience more: love, loss, life, death, happiness. I'll leave it to you to see if/how he does, but other than his relative humanity, I was intrigued by Jordan Dane's version of death, dying and what happens after. While I can't say this incarnation of Death has been my favorite in literature (Terr Pratchett's DEATH will win that contest hands down, any/every time), he/it is understandable, even inspiring sympathy and pity from me. I felt he dragged on a bit too much into the ending, but Death pulled off the feat of coming across as more than just the Grim Reaper of legend.

I wish I could hand On a Dark Wing a higher rating than a mere 2.5 out 5 stars but numerous problems with the novel overwhelm the good. Some elements are handled quite well (Death himself, his personal wants, his individual mythology) while others lacked authenticity (the whole Nate-stalking fiasco) and yet others felt unfulfilled (Abbey and her father). I wasn't a fan of the climax/resolution of the book at all: for all the drama and the tears, it seems both too easy and too simple. It's at least an interesting read, and one that is surprisingly creepy and dark for young-adult novel, but I'm not sure if this is an author I'll keep reading in the future. ( )
  msjessie | Feb 5, 2013 |
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Young Adult Fiction. HTML:

The choices I had made led to the moment when fate took over. I would learn a lesson I wasn't prepared for. And Death would be my willing teacher.

Five years ago, Abbey Chandler cheated Death. She survived a horrific car accident, but her "lucky" break came at the expense of her mother's life and changed everything. After she crossed paths with Death--by taking the hand of an ethereal boy made of clouds and sky--she would never be normal again.

Now she's the target of Death's ravens and an innocent boy's life is on the line. When Nate Holden--Abbey's secret crush--starts to climb Alaska's Denali, the Angel of Death stalks him because of her.

And Abbey finds out the hard way that Death never forgets.

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