~ Book Review: Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton ~

Title: Angelfire (Angelfire #1)

Author:  Courtney Allison Moulton

Publisher: HarperCollins

Release Date: February 15, 2011

Pages: 453
Format: Hardcover

 Source: Bought
Age Group: Young Adult 
Genre: Paranormal 

 

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.

(2.5)

At the moment I have a love/hate relationship with Angelfire. I feel like it had so much more potential than was actually delivered. I understand that it's the first in a trilogy and we do need some world building for what's going to be going on in future books and what not, but I feel like the premises of the entire book was lost.

Ellie is your typical teenager.  She goes to school, worries about her birthday party and stresses out about who will actually show up. That pretty much sums up Ellie before her seventeenth birthday. That is until her nightmares start up again.  She's gotten better at hiding them. One day she sees a certain boy lurking in the background.  He claims to be her guardian and says that she is the Preliator and that her purpose in life is to hunt and kill the reapers that prey on human souls.  One might think this is shocking news yet Ellie takes it in stride.  One day your biggest worry in life is school, the next is trying not to get killed.

I had so many issues with Angelfire. At the very start I was so excited about it because I hadn't read a Angel/Fallen book in so long and it sounded amazing but then it started dragging.  If it wasn't explaining what a certain creature is, it was figuring out what something else was.  Yes, there was a lot of action and I did make a few connections with certain characters, but I feel like the whole purpose, or at the very least, the subplot of the story was lost.

(highlight to read spoiler) 

**SPOILER** I never do this but I feel like it's necessary.  Her memories; I mean seriously! More than half the book I'm like "Hello Will awakened you!!!" yet we have no insight to her bloody memories!  We get flashes here and there but that's not enough.  I thought when a certain something happens she would somehow get them back. To no avail, she does not. That really had me frustrated! **End Spoiler**

I'm not really sure how I feel about Angelfire. Like I said, the story truly got my attention at the very start and I was excited to read something new with a twist. In the end it was somewhat of a letdown. I loved the concept but the delivery of everything could have been executed a lot stronger.