Thursday, October 14, 2010

Angels Unawares: Fall For Grace by Sofie Couch

Angels Unawares: Fall for Grace is a young adult novel by Sofie Couch that follows Grace Breeden. She has just moved to a new town, where most of her eccentric family lives. She's going to her cousin's school, her first normal school since the accident that killed her mother and left Grace scarred. Grace isn't normal, and not just because of the scar that mars her face, she can see blue guys, which is her name for the dead people that float invisibly around us. She routinely talks with her long-dead grandmother, and has become accustomed to hiding the fact that she can commune with the dead. Then why, at this new school, are there so many blue guys? And why can handsome blue guy Salter suddenly touch people? How come Grace has never seen her mother, when she is bugged by so many other ghosts? And who, or what, is determined to see Grace dead? In this story of angels, recovery, and love, Grace and Salter must figure out what is happening in the strange town on the Porpotank river-before another person ends up dead.

This book was interesting in some parts, but I felt that it was lacking in others. The setting, a small town on the Porpotank River, is beautifully described and came off as very real. However, the same cannot be said for some of the characters. Strangely, I felt that the more minor characters, such as Grace's cousins and their friends, had more depth and personality than the two main characters, Grace and Salter. I thought that both characters didn't have much background or personality, and that the love story between the two seemed forced. The thing that disappointed me the most was the ending. Almost all of the problems are left unsolved and it seems as if the book needs another fifty pages to wrap it up. This book, however, is the first in a series, and I would hope that the problems will be solved later on, but I am not at all motivated to spend another few days reading a sequel. I found the writing to be dull in some parts and the action scenes didn't seem quite right. I would not recommend this book to someone; I found it to be forgettable and boring, and even though some parts were very poetic and well-written, and the author conveyed her theme of recovery and love well, the rest of the book was lacking.

Reviewer Age:14
Reviewer City, State and Country: Milwaukee, Wisconsin United States