Strange Angels

This. Was. Awesome.

Dru Anderson's been traveling with her dad for years, hunting down and killing the sorts of things that go bump in the night. After an ugly time in Florida, Dru and dad have settled in a small Dakota town and her dad seems to be gearing up for another fight, but this time he tells her to stay home. When he returns, it's not him anymore, and Dru has to kill the zombie that was once her father before it kills her.

Dru's gotta figure out what's going on quick, before the monster that killed her father, then resurrected him, gets her. And she has to do so with the help of a determined pretend Goth kid from school, all while her previously mild psychic ability seems to be...growing.

Dru is a strong, smart girl who's scared show more outta her wits. She's sick with what has happened to her father (not to mention what she was forced to do to him), and terrified by the persistence with which the faceless bad guy is chasing her.

Her emotional roller coaster feels very authentic, and Graves, the boy from school who helps her out and ends up getting dragged into the whole mess, is kind and admirably resilient.

This story is fast-paced, scary, exciting, intriguing and bad ass. Definitely recommended!!! show less

Strange Angels
(Strange Angels #1)
by Lili St. Crow
Wow! This book has a chokehold on me and would not let me beathe! Fast paced, insanely good world building, believable characters, dialogue between characters often sprinkled with humor and tears, heart pounding suspense, situations no sane person should ever have to be in, and I loved all anxiety induced moments!
Our gal and her dad are hunters, but they don't hunt what the Real world knows about. They hunt the nightmares. But dad doesn't come home. This is our gal's story that takes us into their world, buckle up! It is full of things unseen, things with teeth, and things that hunt back! This book is going in my favorite folder.

Summary: Imagine if Supernatural's Sam and Dean Winchester were one combined into one person; and that one person were a girl. If you can do that, you'll have a pretty good basis for Dru Anderson the main character in Strange Angels. Strange Angels is the first book in Lili St Crow's (Lilith Saintcrow) YA series.

Apart from some time spent with her superstitious, magic practicing-now deceased- grandmother, Dru's whole life since her mother's death has been spent traipsing around the country with her father, a demon hunter. A different state, different town, different house, different school every few months at least means Dru (now in the Dakotas) has her routine down pat and knows what to expect when her father's out on a hunt.

But Dru show more also has what her grandmother called the 'touch' that allows her to see and sense things about the supernatural world (the Real World) that other humans can't. Asleep one night while her father's still out, Dru wakes up to find she's drawn a strange picture in her sleep and her father's still not back--something he's never before done.

When he does eventually return, it's as a zombie and Dru's forced to painfully revert to her years of training to save herself from her own father.

Now, truly alone except for a boy named Graves she's befriended at school and with horrible and dangerous things after her--including the sucker named Sergei her father'd been after that night--Dru has to rely on herself and her training to save her own life and Graves'. With her father's journal and her drawing as a guide Dru's has to find out how to kill the things after them and get herself out of town--but to where?

Review: Strange Angels really did seem to borrow a lot from Supernatural (*and spoilers if you haven't seen much of Supernatural*) from going around the country, school to school while the dad chased demons after the mom died; the lack of other relatives to be of assistance or just a part of the story; the dad dying after being 'possessed' and the offspring having to take up the fight then. I really like Supernatural, though, so I didn't see it as a problem and it was only the large themes not specific storylines so it didn't feel like a copy.

One thing I do feel I really need to mention is that early on in the book Dru seemed to take issue with Graves being half Asian. There was a chapter or two when it seemed the only way she was capable of describing him was with basically racist sentiments about him being a 'half breed' (which was in there about 15 times) and " At least he hadn’t drawn the really slit-eyed card a lot of half-breeds have to play, where they look like they’re squinting to beat Clint Eastwood the whole time." (pg. 17)

Dru also had a mouth on her that while it maybe wouldn't make a sailor blush, would definitely make Strange Angels the TV version a premium channel show (both due to its frequency and word choice). Owing to that, I'm not sure if the little interlude of racism was supposed to show her brash, I-don't-care-what-society-thinks-and-I-have-no-tact attitude (she never said anything out loud, it was all her thoughts) and her unsteady upbringing. Or if it was just a weird useless thing that St Crow felt needed to be a part of Dru Anderson.

If you can move past the rather racist bit, Strange Angels is an enjoyable story. The world building is done very well for the first book in a series. The lore is a little bit different from other paranormal tales but close enough that nothing seems far fetched or doesn't make sense. I really look forward to seeing where all of the storylines started in this first book go in the next ones.

It was also really scary (perhaps some was because I listened to the audio at night?). It was great to read a book about things that go bump in the night (sometimes day) and have it actually be creepy.

Series:
Book 1:Strange Angels
Book 2: Betrayals
Book 3: Jealousy

Rating: 8/10 (the 'half-breed' stuff bothered me & seemed unnecessary)

Book Sp(l)ot Reviews
http://book-splot.blogspot.com show less

I would never have picked this book up if I hadn't already read some of Lilith St. Crow's other novels, primarily because the cover is atrocious. Every time I pick my copy up, or even look at it, I want to scoff. I mean, "heartbreaker"? Really? That's not the main character at all. There isn't any more than a hint of romance in the first book, even.

Cringe-worthy cover aside, I always enjoy reading "Strange Angels." The first time I read it, I thought the title was a little... well, strange, but it has grown on me. (Mostly because Dru's self-appointed protector isn't her only offbeat guardian angel.)

My favorite part about this book is and always will be the main character. The story is told in first person POV, so we get right into her show more head from the very start. She's a tough kid, and I can't help but admire her for that, but she's also still just a kid, and I both love and respect her for that. It makes me sympathize with her every step of the way, and even put myself in her shoes--I caught myself thinking the other day how messed up I'd be if someone turned my own father into a zombie (I know, I know. lol.), and how impressive it is that she isn't more messed up.

My other favorite part about this book is her relationship with Graves. He's fantastic, too, because he's real and messed up like she is but also coping as well as he can, just like she is.

I'm not so crazy about Christophe, though. He comes off as pretentious and underdeveloped as a character, and yet he's so central to Dru's struggles throughout the series.

Anyway, ignore the annoying cover. For a first venture into the realm of YA novels, Lili St. Crow has done a pretty frigging fantastic job of navigating her way to a great book. show less

Kearsten says: This. Was. Awesome.

Dru Anderson's been traveling with her dad for years, hunting down and killing the sorts of things that go bump in the night. After an ugly time in Florida, Dru and dad have settled in a small Dakota town and her dad seems to be gearing up for another fight, but this time he tells her to stay home. When he returns, it's not him anymore, and Dru has to kill the zombie that was once her father before it kills her.

Dru's gotta figure out what's going on quick, before the monster that killed her father, then resurrected him, gets her. And she has to do so with the help of a determined pretend Goth kid from school, all while her previously mild psychic ability seems to be...growing.

Dru is a strong, smart girl show more who's scared outta her wits. She's sick with what has happened to her father (not to mention what she was forced to do to him), and terrified by the persistence with which the faceless bad guy is chasing her.

Her emotional roller coaster feels very authentic, and Graves, the boy from school who helps her out and ends up getting dragged into the whole mess, is kind and admirably resilient.

This story is fast-paced, scary, exciting, intriguing and bad ass. Definitely recommended!!! show less

I enjoyed this book so, so much. Dru's character is just the right mix of vulnerable and warrior to make her believable as a teen who has been trained in combat and action from a young age but always worked with her dad as a safety net.

The characters were fully drawn and completely believable, and although some reviewers thought that Dru was too whiny (what? Did we read the same book? My whininess meter read at 0, btw.), I actually wondered for a while if she was showing enough emotion. I mean, here we have a teen whose last living family member, a fully trained and highly successful hunter of creepy things, has just been killed and turned into a zombie by something that's coming for her and she had to shoot her dad dead.

That's a show more pretty good excuse for some angst, yo. And yet, the angst level is really, really low, in my opinion at least. I also greatly enjoyed the character of Graves, and although the plot moved fast and with impeccable pacing, we are still left with ample time to spend with the characters, some of whom are not even really in the story (like Dru's dad, her grandmother, etc.) The world was so fully developed that it simply slipped a new layer over our own, familiar world and there was not a single time in this book that I was left unconvinced or doubting.

There were some minor flaws (pretty predictable plot, uhm, I think that's it), but this book was so much fun to read, so gripping and enjoyable that I read well into the night and also while I should have been doing other things (*cough* blogging, spawnwrangling, working *cough*). I was left drooling for more (but no cliffhanger ending, YAY) and highly satisfied.

Who would like this book? I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes paranormal fiction, Urban Fantasy, and/or a ton of heart-racing action. show less

I'm somewhat new to the paranormal genre in general. I have always loved reading, but really found reading vampire books addicting and seriously enjoyable. It brought back my love for reading, and when I couldn't find books at the bookstore on vampires I branched out into werewolves; I never thought I would continue that into the zombie realm, or the paranormal horror. After spending some time in book forums, the idea of those books started to become intriguing. I picked this book to start with for several reasons. 1) It's YA, which in general I don't gravitate to, but I figured it would be a tamed down version of these types of books. 2) It's written by a very well known author who a lot of people love (even though I myself have never show more read her).

I surprisingly have a lot to say about this book. This was in no way what I thought it was going to be. I was expecting a full on book about Zombies, which I was completely wrong about. Really there was only one zombie in the entire book and it was a very short appearance. Dru is a great character, a young girl who is literally forced to figure out how to fend for herself very suddenly after her father becomes a zombie and she has to kill him.

Before I get into the specifics of the book I want to point out that I had a hard time reading this book, in fact I started it several times, starting in June. I felt like the book was so slow. And not only was it slow but it didn't keep my attention so when I would take a break from it I would have to start reading it again from the beginning to even remember what happened. I think St. Crow spent so much time trying to establish the characters and the back story without actually doing so during action that it became almost tedious to read the first half of the book. However after the first part of the book, the action started to pick up and it became a lot easier to read. I'm hoping that later down the line in the serious they won't start off that slow because the back story has already been established.

Graves is a really interesting character to me, even more so than Dru. Clearly the book revolves around Dru, but along her journey she finds Graves. Graves clearly is a nice guy, who extends himself to help Dru in her time of need, without really even knowing her. Throughout the book it is revealed that he is also on his own, and really living on his own down to a science, he knows how to survive on his own. In contrast Dru has always had someone to take care of her, and even though she had been trained by both her father and grandmother, the second she is on her own completely she really has no idea what to do. Graves really helps her out in the beginning and then helps to give her a purpose. Graves' wanting to help her ends up exposing him to a world he didn't even know existed. Not only does he become aware of the creepy crawlies of the Real World but he becomes one of those beings he didn't know existed.

Really i think this book is about the two characters, Graves and Dru, finding their way, and really finding out who they are. Graves suddenly becoming a werewolf, and being launched into a world he knows nothing about. And Dru, who believes she knows what she is, and believed that she knew a lot about the Real World, is suddenly told she is something completely different, she's not fully human, and all of the information she knew about the Real World barely scratched the surface. And now that these two people know who they are I have a feeling that the next book is going to be about the two of them finding their respective places within this world.

While I wish the book would have been more interesting to start with, it redeemed itself in the end, and made me interested to find out what happens in the next book. I also think this is one of the better YA books. YA books in my opinion normally end up being good or really bad, there really is no in between. And thankfully this book falls into the good category. show less