angel eyes trilogy // book review

once you've seen, you can't unsee.

the light and the colour. the heat and the peace.
and he imagines.
the knot in my throat is constant
a harsh, expected question...he isn't asking to hurt me.
it's not broken. not anymore.
the jewel-toned sky bounces off his talons as he dives for the girl.
the sound of a thousand birds taking flight assaults my ears
how he hates fear!
so heavy, so thick is this concentration of terror
a pang of angst strikes me.
the air seems too thin, and I can't breathe in enough of it.
prismatic raindrops run down his cheeks
but his smile is warm.
"and the truth shall set you free."

#
 excerpts from Angel Eyes, bk 1


It's been a long time since I cuddled up on the couch and read a really good book, cover-to-cover. But today I was sick, no school or leadership seminar that I'd been wanting to go to (alas!), and so that's what I did.

The house was empty, family out and about with homeschool co-op and swimming lessons and shopping, and I dozed and blew my nose and fell head over heels into the world of the Angel Eyes trilogy (Dark Halo, to be precise), which was, wow. Amazing.

I read the first two books about a year ago, when the third one hadn't been released yet, and I fell head over heels for the way this woman writes. Her prose was stunning. and of course, the plotline was solid and heartwrenching and yes maybe I was a little very tense when we neared the climax, and the characters were warm and real and loveable, but her words. were. gorgeous.

Generally, when I read, I skim. And I hate that I do it, but I get so caught up in the action, the drama, I so desperately need to know what happens next! ...that a lot of the time, I flip pages so quickly that I grasp the basic idea of what's going on, but none of the beauty. And yes, I catch myself doing it here, too, but Shannon Dittemore's words are so captivating on their own that I find myself slowing down, totally enveloped by her descriptions of even the most mundane things.

The knot in my throat is constant. An aching thing. Shallow breaths 

whisper around it, sting my chapped lips, and leave white smoke

monsters in the air. It takes them nine seconds to disappear. Nine seconds

for the phantoms I've created to dissolve into nothingness. 

How long till the one haunting my dreams does the same?

-opening paragraph of chapter 1, bk 1-

And her characters! Brielle, the MC*, is an imperfect, flawed, totally likeable human being struggling with the recent death of her best friend. She's covered by cold, a chill crawls over her skin that she just can't shake, no matter how many sweaters she piles on.

And then she meets Jake. 

(here we're going to take a quick pause just so I can say that while there is a romantic attachment between these two characters, the books themselves are not romance stories. Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.

You may proceed.)

Jake is the new guy at school, and he's hot. Literally. (although, just so we're clear, this guy has a lot more going for him than just being the attractive love interest.)
Kaylee, Brielle's best friend, is absolutely hilarious and reminds me of so many people I know in real life (and honestly, a bit of myself, too.)
Miss Macy, Canaan, Marco, Ali...even Brielle's dad are all so well-developed, and by the time you reach the last book you'll realize that although the story is told from Brielle's POV**, it isn't hers alone. The Angel Eyes trilogy spans many stories, tying them into one. Each of the people involved is carrying on their own life, with struggles and hurts that act like a stone dropped into a pond...ripples spreading everywhere.
And so yes, Brielle is the narrator for much of the trilogy, but the story isn't just hers.
IT'S SO COOL, OKAY.

So now you should all go and buy/borrow/steal a copy of these three and settle in for the weekend, because mmmm they're just SO good. (except don't steal because stealing isn't nice.)
And then come talk to me and we can get excited together. Okay? Okay.

xx
Olivia

*main character

**point of view