I met someone who changed everything. Matthias. My autistic sister's guardian angel. Honest. Inspiring. Funny. Hot. And immortal. That was the problem. What could I do? I did what any other girl would do-I fell in love with him. Zoe's sister darts in front of cars. Her brother's a pothead. Her parents are so overwhelmed; they don't see Zoe lost in her broken life. Zoe escapes the only way she knows how: partying. Matthias, a guardian sent from Heaven, watches over Zoe's autistic sister. After Zoe is convinced he's legit, angel and lost girl come together in a love that changes destiny. But Heaven on Earth can't last forever.
Title: Heavenly (Heavenly, #1)
Author: Jennifer Laurens
Format: paperback, 280 pages
Genre: young adult, paranormal romance
Source: review copy
Published: August 2009 by Grove Creek Publishing
Buy the book: The Book Depository | Amazon
Find the author online: website | blog | twitter | facebook
Why I Read this Book: I just recently came across Heavenly after seeing it somewhere in the book blogging community. I read the blurb and it appealed to me. I found the premise of an unattainable love with a guardian angel to be quite interesting.
What I Liked: The author created real characters with real everyday situations, with the exception of guardian angels of course.
Autism is not something that I am familiar with, however the author did a wonderful job shedding some light on this difficult condition. I like how Zoe was honest with her feelings in regards to Abria, her younger and autistic sister. Of course Zoe loves Abria but the reader also gets to witness the frustrations and overwhelming situations Zoe is put through time and time again. Zoe sees how stressful her younger sister can be on her parents so she tries to alleviate some of that stress by tending to Abria. None of the characters in Heavenly are perfect; in fact, each has their own demons and addictions.
What I Didn’t Like: I usually like it when a book starts off at a scene that takes place towards the end of the book and then takes the reader through the journey on how it got to that point. But in this case it didn’t work for me. The first part of the first chapter felt out of place and left me confused.
I wasn’t too fond of Zoe’s character. She’s a good person but at times she was selfish and a hypocrite. She gave her brother, Luke, a hard time about doing pot when there she was drowning her own misery with booze. Zoe is in complete denial of being a alcoholic and sadly at the tender age of 18.
There is still one question, and to me it’s an important one, that hasn’t been answered. I can’t get it out of my head and won’t be able to until it gets addressed. Chase, Zoe’s friend from school, brings up a very good point (page 138 for those of you who have read this book already) and it goes right over Zoe’s head. She wasn’t asking the million dollar question. It isn’t until about 30 pages later (page 172-173), that it’s brought up again (this time by Matthias) and she finally asks this important question. But we don’t get a clear answer from Matthias.
Overall Impression: Heavenly didn’t initially pull me in so I put the book down for a while. I came back to it to find that it still wasn’t catching my attention but I was determined to finish it. The reason being all the 4 and 5 star ratings I’ve seen. I thought that there must be some kind of WOW factor somewhere in this book, seeing that this book got mostly glowing reviews, and I didn’t want to miss out on that. The last third of the book was when things started happening but the WOW moment for me, and it was quite the WOW moment, occurred in the last 10 pages. OMG! Totally not the ending I was expecting; I didn’t see that ending coming at all! It really blew me away. If only the rest of the book had affected me that way.
All the way up to page 270, this book was a 2 Frog rating for me. Those last 10 pages redeemed itself and ultimately got it a 3 Frog rating. That said, I will most likely pick up Penitence to see where things take Zoe. I’ve seen the book trailer for Penitence (do NOT watch it unless you’ve read Heavenly because there are spoilers) and it looks like Zoe is in quite the predicament and there’s also a love triangle involved.
The Book Vixen’s Rating:
The last 10 pages? That's a little too long for me to wait. I'm that patient. A book has to grab hold of me much sooner than that. Glad you were able to hang in there for the WOW moment! :)
ReplyDeleteI love this series. Sorry to hear it was a bit of a disappointment for you. :(
ReplyDeleteI must agree, waiting that long does seem a bit...I fear I would just give up before the WOW
ReplyDeleteI have not read this one...I no longer have the patience for slow starters. If I'm not assaulted by the plot in the first quarter of the book, I drop it like it's hot and move on...these pregnancy hormones have given me a short attention span!!!
ReplyDeleteI might give this a go. I did enjoy her other book A Season of Eden.
ReplyDelete