Thursday, May 17, 2012

Review: A Temptation of Angels

A Temptation of Angels by Michelle Zink

Publisher: Dial
Publication Date: March 20th 2012
Pages: 435
Format: Hardcover
Source: Library
Genre: Historical Fiction, Paranormal, Romance
Goodreads

Even angels make mistakes in this page-turning epic romance...

When her parents are murdered before her eyes, sixteen-year-old Helen Cartwright finds herself launched into an underground London where a mysterious organization called the Dictata controls the balance of good and evil. Helen learns that she is one of three remaining angelic descendants charged with protecting the world's past, present, and future. Unbeknownst to her, she has been trained her whole life to accept this responsibility. Now, as she finds herself torn between the angelic brothers protecting her and the devastatingly handsome childhood friend who wants to destroy her, she must prepare to be brave, to be hunted, and above all to be strong, because temptation will be hard to resist, even for an angel.

Michelle Zink masterfully weaves historical fantasy with paranormal romance to create a gripping tale of love and betrayal.

I first heard about this book a few weeks before it came out when a lot of people were talking about it on twitter and other blogger and reader hangouts online, and hearing so much about it made me really interested in the story. The story is about a girl named Helen who is from a historical world, and one night her parents wake her up in the middle of the night and hide her in the wall of her bedroom and tell her to leave through a secret passage in the wall, and then within a few minutes her house is on fire with her parents inside. When Helen leaves and finds the place that her mother had instructed her to go she finds out that she was born as one of the gaurdians of the world, and the gaurdians are quickly being hunted down and killed.

Helen, the main character, is very rebellious and very strong headed. She is a very strong character who, no matter the customs at the time, refuses to let men tell her what to do. During parts of the book I felt like she had different emotional reactions that a normal person would have had. She never really grieves of the loss of her parents and seems to just except that they are gone, and I really didn't like that. Griffin and Darius are the two brothers that Helen finds after her house has been burned down and she lives with them afterward. The brothers are both gaurdians of the earth, like Helen. Griffin and Darius both have very contrasting personalities, Darius is very mysterious, hard to read, and has a very demanding feel, while Griffin is more friendly towards Helen and a much calmer character. Something I tended to notice throughout the story is that character's physical descriptions where either very general or seemed to be lacking detail that could give a good idea of how to picture them.

The plot is laid out mostly around Griffin, Darius, and Helen trying to figure out who has been killing off all of the other world gaurdians. I noticed while reading that there is a lot of description for the entire story, and even though it made the story longer it never seemed like too much description. On the other hand I did think that there was not very much that happened in the story for it to be as long as it was. While I was reading, even toward the end I felt like I was never really emerged in the story and I always felt like there was something missing in the story that would have made it click for me.

This story tells a very interesting story in a very intriguing setting. The only issue I seemed to have was I never got truly hooked to the story, and it felt like there was just something missing.


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