A Badass Hidden Gem...http://badassbookreviews.com/badass-hidden-gems/The. Perfect. Escape!A dark, gritty, gory, post-apocalyptic world is so beautifully represented by the author in Angelfall. Beautiful you say? Yes, beautiful! When you read a book, and in your head you can see the world as vivid as if you were looking outside your window, that is beautiful. I wanted to take the world building in this book and yell to some of the YA authors out there and say, “See, this is how you do it”. Nevertheless, who am I to judge? I suck at writing.So, I’m sitting in this post-apocalyptic world and it is has been overtaken by angels. WTF? Angels? Yes, really, angels. Not the sweet, cute boy angels we know from other YA books but serious, sword wielding, destroy the human race, type angels. And these angels, they aren’t even fallen! Ok, so to survive in this world, you need to have some serious skills. You can’t just have the world you know blow up in front of you and know how to survive. Which humans survive in this world? Maybe those with military skills? Maybe those with karate skills? Maybe a young girl of 17 having a homicidal schizophrenic mother; who in an episode of sanity, tells you to do whatever it takes to protect yourself from her moments of paranoia. That’s Penryn.Penryn is prepared for this new world because she’s been protecting her paralyzed sister and herself from their mom’s dangerous episodes of paranoia.The author did not trivialize the mom’s mental illness in any way, shape or form. It was heartbreaking and was portrayed so realistically. So, angels come along and destroy Penryn’s world so she takes her learned survival skills and transfers them to this post-apocalyptic world she now knows.The problem is Penryn can’t do it all. An angel kidnaps Paige in a moment of nasty revenge. To save Paige, Penryn saves another angel in hopes he will guide her to where the angels are keeping Paige.Raffe is the injured angel that Penryn saves. What Penryn doesn’t know is she didn’t just save a “normal” angel. There is so much more to Raffe besides his severed wings, and his cocky attitude. The journey Penryn takes with Raffe to save his sister was action packed, heart wrenching, sad, and even humorous at times. The growth of the relationship between Penryn and Raffe was slow, but perfectly paced and believable.Some of the dialogue between Raffe and Penryn killed me. I’m not a romantic at heart but when Raffe is trying to push Penryn away, I felt like my heart was breaking. I was wondering if somehow, I turned into a 13 year old with my first crush. There is hardly any romance in this book, in fact, I’d say the only romance is the possibility of romance, and how two characters learn to not only live with each other, but live for each other.Here is the thing; I go from not writing a review, to not shutting up. Therefore, to wrap up this review, I’m going to tell you what I didn’t like…Towards the end of the book, some of the characters seemed a bit science-fiction-ey (totally made up word). If the story wasn’t so strong, I’d even cringe a bit. However, I didn’t even give it a 2nd thought until I sat here and wrote the review. I’m just trying to anticipate what others might think when reading the book.I believe this book is still 2.99! 2.99 you all! I spent 2.99 on one of those fancy Starbuck drinks this morning (and I don’t even touch coffee). Go buy this book! Please, because I really want the author to write more and to do this, we need to give her our support!
