Book Review: Halo by Alexandra Adornetto

Halo by Alexandra Adornetto
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Publication date: August 2010
ISBN: 9780312656263
Source: review copy provided by publisher

 

Bethany, Ivy, and Gabriel are not your typical family.  They have been sent on a special mission - an angelic mission - to save the citizens of Venus Cove.  While Gabriel and Ivy have been able to adjust to life on earth and still maintain their angelic aloofness, Bethany finds herself feeling more like a human sometimes than an angel.  Especially when she meets Xavier, a handsome and kind human boy at her school.  But things are about to get a lot more complicated with the arrival of a new student with a dangerous history.

Things I Liked:
The book has a lot of good things going for it.  I enjoyed the religious aspect of these angels, which I've found is missing in a lot of recent teen angel books.  (It seems odd to me to have a book about angels, fallen or not, that never mentions God.)  It was interesting to see the difference between humans and angels in their reactions and feelings.  It's a fast and easy read and I felt a compulsion to finish it and find out what happens to the characters, though I often didn't feel a connection to them.  I thought the interesting parts were the conflict of feelings between angel and human sides, particularly for Bethany since she was the only one susceptible to human feelings.  The thing that I enjoyed the most was how much it reminded me of my own teenage romances (more discussed below).
 
Things I Didn't Like:
I must admit, however, that for the most part I was unimpressed.  The book is too long and I thought that there was a lot extraneous detail that could have been left out.  I think the biggest problem for me, however, was the romance.  Xavier and Bethany essentially fall into eternal and complete love with one another right away.  Their inability to be apart from one another (even for an hour) without physical pain seemed ridiculous.  When I was reading about their relationship, I was reminded of my teenage romantic experiences (and how you think the world will end if you break up).  But it was very over-the-top; so melodramatic that I felt distracted from anything else in the story.  I'm quite positive many teen girls will enjoy it, but I guess I'm too far removed from that experience to enjoy reading about that kind of romance.  I gotta give Adornetto props for writing so well at such a young age - I'm sure she's closer to the teen romance experience and therefore captures it fairly accurately.

Read-alikes:
Fallen by Lauren Kate
Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick
Unearthly by Cynthia Hand

BOOK CONTENT RATINGS:
s-factor: !
a very few (if any)

mrg-factor: X
very light, nothing descriptive

v-factor: ->
a little fighting, again very mild

Overall rating: **

Is it ridiculous to read teenage romance with your adult sensibilities?

It does have a pretty cool trailer going for it though:

If you buy through my Amazon linkage, I will get a very small percentage