Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton

Summary/Cover Image from Publisher's Website:

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.

Review:

Everyone has that one or two books a year that no matter how much they want to love the book at hand, they just can't. It didn't mesh well with them, or they didn't like the main character, or they feel underwhelmed. Sadly enough, Angelfire was that kind of book for me. I wanted to love it, I really did. I mean, demon slayers? How cool is that? But in the end, I felt very underwhelmed with the whole story at hand. Don't get me wrong, I liked it and will be reading the sequels, but it didn't always mesh well with me. Maybe it was because I was expecting so much out of this book...

Though, before we get to that, let me tell you a little about the plot. Angelfire tells the story of Ellie, an affluent teen girl living a normal life. Sure, she has problems with her dad at times and isn't doing terribly well in all her classes, but pretty much everything else is good in her life; she has great friends, a possible boyfriend, and a great mom. But everything changes the day Will walks into her life. With Will she begins to feel things she has never felt before- longing, romantic feelings, and even a feeling that she's been with him in previous lives. Finally, on her seventeenth birthday she finds out the real reason for Will's presence: she's a demon slayer and he's her protector. But when Ellie learns something disturbing facts about her past life, will she be able to face the monsters that killed her off in many times in the past? And is there something more to her and Will then what meets the eye? Only time will tell in this page-turner.

Let's start with Ellie. Ellie was a good main character. I liked the way she was fierce and rose the task of what she was meant to be: a demon slayer. Sadly enough, I could never really come to relate or even love her all that much, which was one of the main reasons why I only "liked" not "loved" this book. Though, I will say I adored Will. He was sweet, kind, basically a gentlemen to the bone. I adored the way he was Ellie's protector and how they begun to develop a relationship over the course of the novel.

As mentioned before, the premise of this is amazing. It was actually one of the big reasons why I wanted to read Angelfire in the first place, but the execution of the plot left me feeling very underwhelmed because there wasn't nearly enough drama, fighting, and twists and turns as I expected there to be. It basically moved in a normal pace that often left me bored in several places.

I will says Courtney Allison Moulton's writing was pretty darn good, because for the most part, I really liked what she was trying to do, and I feel that as this series continues, it will become better and better.

In all, while Angelfire wasn't my absolute favorite book of the year, it definitely isn't my least favorite by a long shot. As I've said beofer, I still will be reading the sequels to this because I have a feeling that the more time I spend in Will and Ellie's world, the more I'll come to love it. So, I do recommend you consider picking this up because even if you don't love it as much as some do, at least you'll have a series to consider picking up in the future, like I now do.

Grade: B-

Angelfire will be released February 15, 2011.

Source: Netgalley