Always, Angel (Lost Angels, .5)
by Heather Killough-Walden
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Let me start by saying that I read this short novellette, after reading the first three books, which was probably good. Angel is mentioned in each of the three novels, in the same brief manner. She has been an online friend to all of our archess. So from the beginning, even in book one, I had a feeling that Angel was going to play a role at some point.
At this point we learn that Angel learns about each archess through dreams, and then she friends them online, and she also keeps and eye on them in real life without them knowing it. She wants to keep them alive and make sure they met their archangels. She knows the drill, she knows what her purpose is and what she was put here for, sorta.
The thing is she doesn't really want them to get together because once they all do then something called the Cummulation is supposed to start and they are all supposed to be whisked back to heaven and not be here to help the human population anymore, and Angel is big on helping the humans.
We get just enough story to let us understand Angel a little better and to accept her role in all this. We understand the Cummulation a tiny bit better, but I still get the feeling that there is more to it than anyone really knows, and we actually find out who Angel was made for. Now its time to carry on and see what happens.
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Death's Angel (Lost Angel's, Book 3)
by Heather Killough-Walden
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Azrael is suppose to be his brother Gabriel's best man at his wedding to his beloved archess, Juliette, but it is taking every once of control he has learned to master over the thousands of years on earth to keep in that spot. Nothing prepared him for the sensation of looking across the isle at the maid of honor and seeing his archess.
Sophie is obsessing over Azrael, at least that is what she thinks it is. She doesn't understand that she is an archess because she hasn't come into her powers yet. She has also had a very rough life and she doesn't feel that she is worthy of being an archess or even of being loved, or thought of as pretty. She has no idea how beautiful she really is, and no idea the turmoil she is causing Azrael.
Azrael spends most of the service using his Vampire powers to read her mind and memories, and what he finds alarms him. When Gabe and Jules found each other, they realized that each archess life experience was tied to each archangel, so since Gabriel was the Messenger angel, sometimes known for rebirth or reincarnation Jules had to go through a number of horrible lives with only one or two of her powers and face terrible deaths until she found Gabe. With Azrael being the Angel of Death, everyone was worried about the life that his archess would have had to go through, so Az felt it was ok to go through her mind. What he finds alarms him, and he wants to take things very slow with her.
Problems arise when the Adarian's appear and make their knowledge of Sophie known. Az calles out his legions of vampires to watch over Sophie. Over the years Az, being the very first vampire, has turned a number of people, and everyone is of Az's bloodline, they all look to Az as their leader or King. What no one realizes until later is that there are some new players in town, even older than the Adarian's, who thought they were the first. Oops. Seems like everyone has a grudge out against the "Favored Four".
Really? Az was next, but then again I should have know that Michael would be last, as he was the favorite of the favorites. Then again this was such a good book because we knew it from the start, I mean Az and Sophie met at the wedding of Gabe and Jules in the end of the last book! So this just picked up from there at a run, and I do mean a run. It was fast!
So much going on, so much to do and so much to get together. Things with the Adarian's are getting a little scary, in that Kevin might be going slightly crazy. Personally I have always thought he was off his rocker, but now others are starting to think it too, and that is a big change from them blindly following him. Then there are the new players! I love reading those stories! Of course Sam is still around, and no one know what the hee-haw he is up to. In fact, Sam in a little too quiet for my liking.
Well, I have now read all three of the books that my library has, so I have to go and download the rest, which I am doing now because I must finish the series! I have to know more! I really have to finish the series. i'm just debating on going back and picking up the prequel first and then finish or finishing and then going back.
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Avenger's Angel (The Lost Angel's, book 1)
by Heather Killough-Walden
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
In the beginning of time, the Old Man had his four most favorites, and he created for them each a perfect woman, but because of the greed of others they were sent to Earth. The four left, and went to Earth to find them but it was not as easy as they had thought. Thousand's of years have past and they are still looking, never thinking they will find.
Uriel, the Avenger, is currently going by the name Christopher Daniels, and working as an actor. Why not? Although all the screaming fans have him rethinking his rash decision. He is on his way to a book signing in a small town, when a sudden storm appears, he didn't feel it coming, he always does. Something isn't right, he can feel it but he doesn't know what it is until he runs away from a hoard of screaming fans and hides in a women's restroom. Here he is caught by a woman and a small child, and he knows in an instant who she is - she is his one! His archess.
Now - I'm going to leave the story at that because if I tell you anymore it ruins it!! Just know that nothing is ever easy! Uriel can't just say, you're my one and only, and she fall into his arms and they ride off into the sunset. She can be stubborn and hardheaded. An added bonus here is there are other beings looking for her too, ones that Uriel knows nothing about, until it's almost too late.
This is an amazing book. We meet all four of the special ones, they have stayed together all these years, brothers. They are close and connected, even though the fall to Earth changed them. We also learn of Michael, Gabriel and Azrael. Of course, they didn't come alone, they were sent a guardian, Max; but on the other side some of the not so good guys who started this whole mess came down too. One of them is Samuel, and Samuel wants one of archess for himself.
This is the first book I have read by this author and I loved the way she wrote. I enjoyed the way it pulled me in and felt for Uriel, and the others, but I also understood Ellie, and I couldn't stop reading it all night! I'm ready to start book two.
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So Shall I Reap (The Unseen Series, Book 1)
by Kathy-Lynn Cross
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Reviewed for +Readers' Favorite
Balance is what the world is based on. In So Shall I Reap, we are introduced to the world of the Unseen, those on both sides as they work to keep the balance. Those on one side, the House of Dark, usually called grim reapers, take the souls as someone dies and return part of it to the River Styx to keep in flowing, the other part they give to the bridge crossers, part of the House of Light to be recopied again at a later time. It's all a cycle that bears no emotion, and happens time and time again each day. Until the day that a reaper named Tevin is sent to collect the soul of a six year old girl, Alexcia. The problem is that Alexcia is able to see him, this has never happened to him before, and after a fierce fight with Razor, the bridge crosser, Rae-Lynn, Alexcia's mother explains to Tevin that Alexcia is the Child of Balance and makes him promise to keep her safe. Author Kathy-Lynn Cross gives an amazingly complex story of a family, trying to protect their daughter, getting some things right and some things wrong. A grim reaper protecting the life of a child, which is against everything he is about, and the House of Light doing everything in its power to claim her.
Author Kathy-Lynn Cross has labeled So Shall I Reap as the first book in a series, which is good because this book ends on a huge cliff-hanger of an ending. You really only get to originally meet the characters when Alecxia was six and then we spend a couple weeks with them the month before her sixteenth birthday. As a reader, you get Alexcia's view of what is going on, and then you get Tevin's, and neither have all the answers. It seems that Rae-Lynn and Max have kept a number of secrets from them both, from Alexcia in efforts to protect her, and from Tevin, to allow him to discover it on his own and not to influence fate. There is no sex or real violence, but there is teenage drinking. It is a great read for all ages. Enjoy.
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Apocalypse of Angels: Seeing Angels
by Harmony Lawson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Reviewed for +Readers' Favorite
Cami has always known that she was different, she has always been much more mature that her peers, but maybe that is more of an effect of the fact that Cami can see angels. Oh they don't look like the pictures in the books, very rarely can she glimpse their wings, usually it is only by the glow of their eyes that she knows they are angles, but she has just always known they were. It's just a secret she keeps to herself. Cami lives with younger sister Beth, and her parents in a small trailer in Winston, Oregon. She is a wonderful artist, but dreams of going to college to study art are not going to happen for her, there isn't that kind of money laying around. Lately Cami has been noticing more angels. The new guy in town Earl, is asking Cami out, and she normally doesn't go out. Then she's having freaky dreams. Finally at the Spring Fair, she sees some paintings that she loves, and when the guy working the booth talks to her, she almost melts at the sound of his voice, only to turn around and notice that he is an angel! She has never talked to one before. What is going on here? In Apocalypse of Angels Harmony Lawson has created a normal all-american teen-ager in a lower working class family and given her a special ability.
Apocalypse of Angels builds from this simple story of Cami, a normal teenager who just happens to see angels, to a teenager that evil demons, or fallen angels want for some reason. As the book goes along Harmony Lawson does a wonderful job of giving Cami a basic knowledge of angels and faith, but without the taint of organized religion, and as she learns more everything is greet with an air of faith with question, giving it a more believable feel. The story revolves around teenagers at the end of high school so you could call it a coming of age story, but I feel the tone and style of writing lends itself to being read by a wide variety of readers. As an adult reader I enjoyed and as I mentioned parts to my own pre-teens, they wanted to read it. That is what I like, and to me that says this is a good book!
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Guardian
by A.L. Crouch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Reviewed for +Readers' Favorite .
As a child Alex was in the car when her parents were killed, saved only by a voice and vision that only she could see. She ran from her small town home and the memory of that vision, but fate has brought her back home now, at age twenty-five. Her original goal was to get in and out of town as fast as she could, but once there, and in her old home, the vision from the past returns. Memories of the murder also return, and to keep herself alive, Alex must learn to have faith and trust in something that she cannot see. Guardian is a warming tale of the idea that there can be someone out there watching over us, loving us and keeping us safe, even if we can't see or hear them. A.L. Crouch does a wonderful job mixing faith and paranormal together to come to this unique blend in this story of seeing a vision that is not really there yet is.
Guardian is unlike any other story about a guardian angel that I have ever read. It is not that there is a heaven that sends those to watch over you, but is something entirely different, and it takes just the faith to believe in the unseen to see them. A.L. Crouch has written a story that gives you adventure, romance, suspense, mystery and intrigue along with faith and the paranormal, all wrapped into one amazing tale. It is something to read, and one that you will be hard pressed o put down before you finish it.
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