Halo by Alexandra Adornetto

Halo by Alexandra Adornetto

Halo is one of those books where I don’t know how I really feel about it…
Is love a great enough power against evil?

Three angels are sent down to bring good to the world: Gabriel the warrior; Ivy the healer; and Bethany, a teenage girl who is the least experienced of the trio. But she is the most human, and when she is romantically drawn to a mortal boy, the angels fear she will not be strong enough to save anyone – especially herself.

I don’t know who I was annoyed at the most: Gabriel or Bethany. I got very annoyed at Bethany because whilst I was reading it, I was yelling at her to not fall in love with anyone because she’s got a job to do. I mean come on, if I was an angel I would not want to let some boy stop me from doing my job. Hello! I would work for God. How awesome is that? I’d have powers and wings. No mortal boy is stopping me from being an awesome angel. Bethany was so stubborn and would go against anything that Gabriel said. He’s Gabriel, you do not want to mess with him (yes, he’s exactly the Gabriel that you’re thinking of.)
However, I wanted to yell at Gabriel because even though being an angel would be super cool, I can completely understand why Bethany would be fascinated with Earth. It’s completely different to anything that she’s ever experienced before and because she’s a young angel, she’s going to be influenced very easily. Gabriel would be so stern with Bethany and expect her not to pique an interest in anything. I know he’s an archangel and everything but come on, give the girl some slack.
“One of the most frustrating words in the human language, as far as I could tell, was love. So much meaning attached to this one little word. People bandied it about freely, using it to describe their attachments to possessions, pets, vacation destinations, and favourite foods. In the same breath they then applied this word to the person they considered most important in their lives. Wasn’t that insulting? Shouldn’t there be some other term to describe deeper emotion?”
– Alexandra Adornetto, Halo
 
 
Even though I could see both of the characters points of view, I admit I was absolutely sick of hearing how much Xavier and Bethany loved each other, or how gorgeous Xavier was. We get it, you find him attractive. Get over it already. I also hated how overprotective Xavier was. If I had a boyfriend and he was like that, I would tell him to stop and that I could handle carrying my own school books. And I hated when he decided he could just answer for Bethany is class. I seriously wanted to punch him. But everything was ok, it was fine that he was overprotective because he was attractive *sarcasm* (I hate books like that, that get the male to do everything for the female because we’re apparently so weak we can’t even carry our own books.)

Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy the book as well. It started to get good when Jake Thorn was introduced but again another cliche of a British guy being evil. Us British people aren’t all evil ok? I finished this book in two days and even though there were some very annoying bits with the romance and the characters, I found the whole idea of the book very interesting.

I am in no way religious (if I was, I’d be a Buddhist) but I like reading books about heaven, hell or limbo. I find it fascinating when it gets a fantasy twist put on it and I think it was this that made me keep reading it. I like reading about evil trying to take over and the good guys trying to fight it.

I also found Adornetto to be very descriptive in her writing. Sometimes I found it brilliant as it made me imagine the setting of Venus Cove much more clearly and made me understand the characters better, but on the other hand, sometimes it got annoying because she would repeat herself when describing things. However, I would say that the descriptive side of the book is more positive than negative in its storytelling.

Because of this, I will be reading the second book in the series: Hades. I don’t think I will thoroughly enjoy the second book because I wasn’t a big fan of the second, but let’s hope that I like it enough to not put it down for the second time.

 

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