Book Review of Angel Star by Jennifer Murgia

Title: Angel Star

Author: Jennifer Murgia

Release Date: May 18th, 2010

Seventeen-year-old Teagan McNeel falls for captivating Garreth Adams and soon discovers that her crush has an eight-point star etched into the palm of his right hand-the mark of an angel.

But where there is light, dark follows, and she and Garreth suddenly find themselves vulnerable to a dark angel’s malicious plan that could threaten not only her life, but the lives of everyone she knows, and now, she is torn between one angel’s sacrifice and another angel’s vicious ambition.

Divinely woven together, Angel Star takes readers on a reflective journey when one angel’s sacrifice collides with another angel’s vicious ambition in a way that is sure to have readers searching for their own willpower.

Summary from Goodreads.com

My Review: This book was recommended to me by my awesome blog buddy Kate (who also happens to have a quote on the back cover of this book, how cool is that?)  Anyway, my “to be read” pile has been mixed up in my move and I finally got all the boxes unpacked last week.  So now I am on vacation (and brought a suitcase with just books, no really I did) and this book was on the top of the pile so I picked it up last night.  I started reading it around 9:00 pm last night and stayed up until 1:00am to finish, I was addicted!!  I seriously could not put it down, I may have closed it temporarily to get a drink or something but it was always in my hand.

I am a paranormal, sci-fi, fantasy kinda girl so I love the part of stories where the action picks up and your are left in suspense.  Don’t get me wrong, still love the romance elements in there, what girl doesn’t?  But the suspense side to this genre is what pulls me in completely and that is why I think I love this book so much.  You hit the ground running with Angel Star and I loved every fast paced minute of it.

Since I have been reading for a while now I have also noticed that in many books there is the “fluff” factor.  You know what I am talking about,  all that fluffy stuff that is in books that really doesn’t add to the story.  For example when you read about the characters going  through all the boring everyday things in their life; eating breakfast for four pages, walking down the hall for three pages, or being in a bad mood for half the book (you know what book I mean…hehe)  Okay sorry, you get the point right?  Well, while all that stuff is going on you know you are secretly skipping ahead to try and get to the meat of the story, I know I do it.  This book though, has no fluff, it was incredibly!  I even found myself reading too fast at points and I had to go back and re-read because I had missed an important line two paragraphs before.  It was crazy, I know I read fast sometimes, but I guess I am always ready for the “fluff factor”  but in Angel Star that never came.

As far as characters in the story, Teagan is a great one.  One of the things that I love about her is that she is open to a world outside her own.  She believes that anything is possible and with the nightmares that haunt her, she is constantly searching through paranormal books for more theories and answers.  Which as a fellow lover of this genre made me like her even more.  And then there’s Garreth…I am at a loss for words on how to describe him, but he is definitely worth reading about.  And we don’t even have to wait long to learn more about him, because he finds Teagan in chapter 1 and he is already leaving her breathless.  He is a wonderful character that I don’t want to say too much about because I don’t want to spoil anything, but he is one of my new favorite leading men.

I usually try to write my reviews  right after I read because it is the freshest in my mind and I want those initial thoughts.   But I went to sleep last night to chew over everything I just experienced and woke up this morning and had to re-read some of my favorite passages before I could write up the review.  You see when I really like a book I engulf myself in it and this is one of those books for me.  I have spent the day looking up the author (she has a signing near me that I am going to try and go too…so excited)  and some of the lore mentioned in the book and then realized it was 6:00pm and I had spent the day on the computer!  So my point to all this excited rambling?  You should go pick up this book, duh!?!  You will be swept you off your feet with this novel and you will not touch ground again until the last page.  I think it might take you by surprise, I know it snuck up on me and I am glad it did.

Language Love:

“When the veil of the forest began to smother us, I looked up through the open roof of the Jeep in time to see the flanking limbs choke out the rest of the sun”

It was really hard for me to only pick one line from this book because Jennifer is a master at description.  I was immersed in this world and the descriptions in it were memorizing.  This one is my favorite though, there is just no way you cannot have a picture in your head after this line.