Angelfire

Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulten

First there are nightmares.

Every night Ellie is haunted by terrifying dreams of monstrous creatures that are hunting her, killing her.

Then come the memories.

When Ellie meets Will, she feels on the verge of remembering something just beyond her grasp. His attention is intense and romantic, and Ellie feels like her soul has known him for centuries. On her seventeenth birthday, on a dark street at midnight, Will awakens Ellie’s power, and she knows that she can fight the creatures that stalk her in the grim darkness. Only Will holds the key to Ellie’s memories, whole lifetimes of them, and when she looks at him, she can no longer pretend anything was just a dream.

Now she must hunt.

Ellie has power that no one can match, and her role is to hunt and kill the reapers that prey on human souls. But in order to survive the dangerous and ancient battle of the angels and the Fallen, she must also hunt for the secrets of her past lives and truths that may be too frightening to remember.

Confession: Sweet holy bananas, I tried so hard to like this one, I swear. I really did.  And maybe it’s because I’ve had a growing aversion to many (but not all) paranormal stories because I’m soooooo sick of them.   But I could NOT get into this book.  Whenever I say that I want to apologize to the author and current fans of the book, because it’s not personal.  Or maybe it is, but it’s because of me.  Like, it means, I’m so sick of insert paranormal creature here (angels, vampires, wolves, fairies) who have some sort of insert paranormal force here (evil angels, vampires, wolves or fairies) who want to kill them.  It’s just me. I’m sorry.

So let’s start with the positives. Ellie is a character who is reincarnated numerous times over the last six hundred or so years.  I like reincarnation.  This is interesting.  Will (a major positive in the story) is an immortal who is sworn to guard her. He’s pretty swoony in his flat-out devotion to Ellie.  He’d go anywhere, do anything, search the earth (and has literally waited decades to find her) to protect her.

I had a few problems with Angelfire.  One of the biggest issues is Ellie.  She is beyond annoying.  I absolutely hated her and thus, felt no connection to her.  The story was slow and never fully grabbed me.  And while I liked the aspect of reincarnation and the author’s attempt to create a love story between Ellie and Will, the writing itself was lackluster.  The dialogue seemed forced and often entire pages were filled with the mindless ramblings of Ellie as she described what she did or what she wore that day.

I am sure that this book has an audience who receives it warmly, but it was not for me.

Crush Intensity: Somewhere between a 1/5-1.5/5.  Personally, I never want to pick it up again, but there are tons of glowing reviews on Goodreads that beg to disagree with me.