This one well and truly proves the old adage that you can't judge a book by its cover as the one on this is truly gorgeous, whereas the contents are some of the lamest writing I have ever read. I shall try to avoid slipping into a rant, but judging by the way this book had me yelling at it every five seconds like a deranged person I can't make any promises.
Borrowing heavily from Twilight including meeting via partnerdom in bio class, rescue from danger in Portland (what is it with Portland?) and a heroine whom everyone inexplicably sees as intelligent when she actually displays the IQ of a stone, this is the tale of Nora Grey, a girl with the power to make fallen angels abandon their plans of murder and fall in love with her instead simply by being an apparently schizophrenic, blushing and spluttering moron. The angel, Patch (kudos on the sexy name there, doesn't at all put me in mind of a small, yappy dog) apparently has eyes that 'didn't play by the rules' (what, they smell instead of see? Or are they Marty Feldman-esque?)
Patch (snigger) is meant to come across as a sexy bad boy, but instead comes off as a psychotic creep in desperate need of a shoeing - and this is coming from somebody who was desperately in love (lust) with 90% of the population of HBO's Oz (ahhh, Ryan O'Reilly...now that's how you do a sexy bad boy).
The writing and plot is as bitty and all over the shop as Nora's personality, with events cropping up and characters making decisions that are wildly implausible even within a story set amongst the supernatural, functioning merely to get us to the next 'plot' point. Amongst the many, many things that irked me are:
* Coach, the bio teacher, making Patch and Nora tell the class what they look for in a potential mate, simply so we can shoehorn in some sexual tension. Shut up Coach, and behave like a teacher actually would.
* Nora taking iron pills in front of Patch, while thinking her anemia is her vulnerable secret and that she should try to keep him from finding out.
* This is an 'intelligent' girl, remember, and yet we have her walking down a dark alley in a scary neighbourhood during a freezing cold night and trading her hat and coat (with her phone in the pocket) with a homeless person in exchange for directions, simply so we can shoehorn in another mistaken identity attack.
* After beating Patch's chest with her fists we have him telling her that, having seen her moves, he's sure she can take the angel of death that's after her. Angels of death are either nowhere near as badass as they sound, or their Kryptonite is being punched in the tits. Don't try and make us believe that our heroine can defend herself when you've actually only shown us that she is completely incapable.
* After spending most of the book thinking Patch is trying to kill her, he confesses to both wanting to and nearly doing so twice already. In return she strokes his scars.
On the plus side, my edition had a strange habit of sometimes replacing the y's on the end of words with a ). This led to the best moment of the entire book, when Patch told Nora:
You're getting cock).
Childish, but awesome.
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