Halo (Halo, #1)

by Alexandra Adornetto

[inlibrisveritas]

Let me start by saying that the cover of this book is beautiful, and probably why I decided to give it a chance in the first place. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve heard and seen all the good reviews…but I’ve also seen all the bad ones. Those usually don’t deter me from reading a book if I’m really interested, but the one thing that will make me hesitate are angels. Yep, me and angel books seem to have it out for each other. I’ve read good ones that I enjoyed but it seems like they are very few and far between, so I am skeptical to begin with.

I’m pleased to say that the beginning of this was pretty strong and it held me for 250 pages before I started having some issues. The writing was clear and I loved the flow of it, it felt more angel like with it’s formality. However I noticed that as the book progressed the writing style slipped from that formality to something reminiscent of a style you see in most teenage romance novels. I can understand some change in it based on the character’s development, but to me it became distracting. The plot was…promising in the beginning. I was hoping to either see an angel’s decent to the The Fall or a clash between good and evil, but all I got was a tiny bit of both…which in a nearly 500 page book I expected more. The evil doesn’t come in till well over half way and it doesn’t come to a distinct head till you are nearly done.

My biggest issue was the way the characters developed, or in some cases didn’t. The main character, Bethany, is an angel and she starts out pretty well off in that fact…but as the book continues she becomes obsessed with Xavier, to the point of serious co-dependency. I don’t even like this in normal YA, it comes off as whiny and weak to me when the character can’t even butter her toast without seeing his face in it…So when you introduce this in a book with an angel it becomes one of my biggest peeves because it just seems so unrealistic. She even becomes completely complacent to everything else because of him, and it’s just sickening really. Xavier is the perfect male counterpart in this story. I don’t mean that I think he is perfect, I mean that he is literally without any major flaws. He has some baggage, but event hat doesn’t effect his character in too much of a way that’s noticeable. He’s simply for the lack of a better word, perfect. Gabriel was probably my favorite of the story, simply because he stayed true to his angelic nature. He was the only one who didn’t bother me in anyway. Ivy was an alright character, and I can see her being an angel I just had a hard time with the back and forth description of her. One moment she’s “always detached” and the next she’s happily making dresses and saying a woman she always strive to look her best. That doesn’t seem to detached to me. Bethany’s friends were the epitome of stereotypical high school girls since they talked about nothing but boys, clothes and social events for the entirety of the book.

I had serious high hopes for this since it had such a strong beginning, but it just failed to deliver for me and I found it frustrating. I’m still giving it two stars because despite it’s flaws the overall plot (once you cut out the unimportant Xavier attachment) is decent. I think if it had been more focused on one thing instead of two it would have been good, like her decent from Heaven or the battle against evil. I don’t mind romance on the side but when it makes the whole book stagnant it becomes overbearing. I won’t be buying these, but if I see the second one in the library I might pick it up.