Hello everyone!
Tonight we're taking a look at a slightly different story.
A little while ago I was approached on Goodreads to join this new site that's still in the beginning stages, BookSirens, where readers and authors can come together and exchange ARCs and reviews.
Free books, you say?
Where do I sign up?
Since signing up, I've read a couple of books and decided that I wanted to post a few of those on my blog as well, because I want to share them with you.
The first one of those is going up tonight.
If you've seen the movie City of Angels, this particular book might be right up your alley.
Angel on Watch is, after all, about guardian angels.
We follow guardian angel Arahiel who's just given his new assignment down on Earth - and honestly if you've ever needed to see a haughty angel at work, go check out this one of his employers, Cassiel.
He's such a douchebag that I'm hopeful we get a book about HIM and see what's actually underneath all the grumpiness.
Anyway, the point is that there are a bunch of guardian angels, all assigned to different mortals, and there isn't just Earth to deal with. In fact, as far as the angels go, there's only a handful of the Princes, or high up the hierarchy angels that were actually MADE by God, and not created from mortals later on at some point, so the made ones hand out assignments.
Arahiel himself was mortal once, though not on Earth. His own planet is slightly different, but that was tens of thousands of years ago.
Now he needs to deal with everyday life down on Earth when he's given his assignment.
But right at the beginning, things get complicated.
See, about six hundred years ago, Arahiel broke one of the cardinal rules of being a guardian angel with his charge, Ysabel.
Rule One: guard your mortal and only your mortal.
Rule Two: never prove to your mortal that you exist.
The first one wasn't an issue, but the second one ... Arahiel got a little too close to Ysabel and she saw him, which is a big no-no, and he was removed from the position, letting Ysabel fend for herself. Now, he's being asked not to make the same mistake.
And initially it seems like he won't, because his charge really doesn't seem to be that interesting, although he DOES find out her boyfriend is cheating on her and he starts giving her subtle clues about the fact that she needs to dump him.
But it's her sister that throws everything into chaos.
Coralyn has the same aura as Ysabel - and she can actually travel with her soul, because she accidentally ends up with Arahiel when he goes to speak to Archangel Gabriel, listening in on that conversation.
On Earth, she's a bit busy trying to get donations for a home she's helping to fund, one for people with personality disorders, because her brother has Schizophrenia, one of their parents had it (the other was a drug addict) and it's VERY possible that she's going to deteriorate into it sometime in the future, no matter what her adopted family does or how they try to prevent it.
Also, she's a magnet for trouble, keeping Arahiel busy with averting disasters from her, even though she's technically not even his charge. One such occasion is when she faints in the middle of a donor meeting and has to be rushed to the hospital.
He doesn't really know what's going on, but things come to a head during the gala Coralyn helped plan and where his charge meets this one big donor, Justin, who seems to really like her, and she likes him, so there might be some hope for them there if she dumps her boyfriend, and in the middle of two guardian angels discussing what can kill you in an art museum (has anyone heard of a falling statue?) a guest pulls out a gun.
Justin gets shot, but his angel manages to deflect it to make it non-lethal, though Coralyn then puts herself between her sister and the shooter, and Arahiel embraces her to at least hold her as she dies - and instead the bullet somehow pings right off him.
To make matters worse, his charge breaks Rule Three, which states that you have to believe in guardian angels to merit one, but she doesn't, which immediately terminates Arahiel's position there.
And to top it all off, he gets a new assignment straight from up above, this time to guard Coralyn through all her disasters and fainting spells and her Ysabel aura (despite the fact that Ysabel supposedly shouldn't have been able to reincarnate, and Coralyn is her descendant only). And he's not supposed to make the same mistake as in Spain.
I mean, what's a guardian angel to do?
This is where we leave him and Cora both, and honestly I HOPE I get my hands on the actual series, of which this was a prequel book. It's got a lot of fun elements, some new twists on guardian angels, the possibility of reincarnation, dry humour, and of course what could possibly be described as star-crossed lovers. How could anyone resist?
There were some minor typos in the ARC I was given but that was probably because it was an ARC, not an actual published copy, and they took nothing away from my reading enjoyment.
Now, can somebody give me more guardian angels debating what'll kill their charges in a benign setting, please?
xx
*image not mine
**I received this ARC in exchange for an honest review
***BookSirens did not ask me to promote their site
***BookSirens did not ask me to promote their site
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