Hallowed (Unearthly, #2)

by Cynthia Hand

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

[Spoilers for the first book in the series, Unearthly]

Unearthly captivated me with its strong plot, real romance, and beautiful depiction of angels. At the time I wrote my review, I called it “the best paranormal romance I have read.” Unfortunately, Hallowed floundered and failed to live up to the expectations Hand had built for me. In the acknowledgements she writes that “This book was like riding a bucking bronco to write,” and I am unconvinced that she managed to get it completely under control.

At the beginning, the writing itself is somewhat rocky—and this was the first aspect of the novel I thought of when I read Hand’s statement. She appears to have had some difficulty getting back into the swing of writing. Clara’s voice does not sound real to me here, and she seems painfully awkward even interacting with close friends, making a number of flat jokes that I do not remember being part of her personality from Unearthly. Things eventually get smoothed out, but I had to power through several hundred pages to see it happen.

There is also something of a dearth of plot. At the end of Unearthly, Clara believes she has been unsuccessful in fulfilling her purpose. In Hallowed, she mopes about it. This is a very contemplative and explanatory novel, rather than an action-filled one. Clara essentially walks around pondering whether she did fail in her purpose, what that means, what she should do about it, etc. These are all important questions, but the exploration could be a little more interesting. The book seems to be in as much of a rut as Clara. If she did miss her purpose, well what? Is that just it? Life goes on? Ok.

The romance is almost worse. The love triangle is taken to such an extreme that Clara has few romantic moments with either Tucker or Christian. Mostly, she agonizes. She wonders whether she should be with one or the other, who she is supposed to love. This feels very author-contrived to me, a ploy to make the “suspense” last throughout the trilogy. Personally, I would have loved to see more of why Clara likes either boy. Christian does get a few more chances to prove his worth here, but there is still the idea of his being Clara’s purpose that makes the romance ring a little false, at least to me. If Clara does end up with Christian, she needs to fall in love with him a little more in Boundless, and not just with the idea of him.

Essentially, I found Hallowed very slow. In many places, it was just filling in necessary information about the world of angels or being actual filler to tide readers over until the third book. I was dying to read Hallowed after I finished Unearthly. Right now, I feel I can wait for the paperback of Boundless. A fine book, but not a gripping one.