Wednesday 28 August 2013

[REVIEW] Hallowed by Cynthia Hand

Hallowed by Cynthia Hand
Published: January 2012
Age Group: Young Adult
Series: Unearthly #2
Second time's the charm for me and this book! After re-reading Unearthly, [REVIEW HERE], I found myself absorbed in the series again and proceeded to start Hallowed from the beginning and give it another try. Honestly I'm not sure why I even stopped last time since I was already more than half way through the book but I did and completely forgot about it. And so I read it again and enjoyed it much more then the first time.

Once again it's the love triangle between Clara, Tucker and Christian. I feel like Cynthia Hand is giving each boy their deserved amount of pages because I found Hallowed to focus more on Christian than Tucker. I guess that's fair since Tucker got the most of Unearthly.

Also, once again, we have these visions that the characters have. Although I'm not really sure if they can even be called visions anymore...more like glimpses into the future. I'm slightly confused about the premise of this evolving idea because at first I was like "cool. nephilim children get visions when they're older that is basically their sole purpose of being on Earth. that's cool" and now it just doesn't seem like that. Before the visions came at certain specific moments when part of the vision was coming together. And now they just come sporadically and it's not really a purpose. Does that make sense? Cause if it doesn't don't worry, I'm kind of confused too...

Clara and the other nephilim adolescents get introduced to the angel world formerly in this book in the form of a camping trip. They get introduced to many more adult angels and get told a shocking secret (which I think is a spoiler and to keep this spoiler free I won't be saying anything. Go read the books!) The nephilim adolescents (i.e. Clara, Christian, Jeffrey and Angela) come together and create this lovely Angel's Club which I find to be completely useless when it comes to the story plot but I guess they had to get together somehow. Clara also gets a blackwing stalker (I wasn't that surprised) that kind of becomes her friend (Not really a friend but kind of...and a kind-of friend sounds better than stalker). Also did I mention that Christian and Clara are apparently (a big APPARENTLY) "soul mates"? Why you ask? Oh they just share this special bond and all these visions. That definitely makes people soul mates. Imagine someone said this to you: "Hey, not to scare you or anything but, I saw you in a vision and I get weird feelings around you. I think we're soul mates." Doesn't that sound strange? Oh well, soul mates are meant to be together. Right? I hope I'm right.

I found the story lacking in the development in any other character but Clara and Christian. There are just pivotal scenes in the story that came at a surprise for me, mainly because I didn't understand the character well enough to understand why they would say this or act like that. I understand the need for his love triangle to play out but it's getting a bit too much, and this is coming from someone who's a die hard romantic and LIVES for these angsty romances.

Overall the story wasn't that great. Did I hate it, no. Did I love it, no. Clara became much more annoying in this instalment and the story in general lost it's novelty and attraction that lead me to love Unearthly and rave about it. I don't think this lived up to my expectations (even the second time around) and I'm dreading reading the finale just because I don't want this series to end on a cliché note. I want the two characters that I like to get together. But knowing my luck it won't happen.

BUT even after everything I said, this was still a lovely read and I was very excited to know what happened to everyone after the fire and everyone's relationships. It was interesting to read the turmoil and somewhat internal conflicts between the few, but important,  characters in the story.
MEH

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