Review: Angelfall by Susan Ee

It's been six weeks since angels of the apocalypse descended to demolish the modern world. Street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night. When warrior angels fly away with a helpless little girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her back.

Anything, including making a deal with an enemy angel.

Raffe is a warrior who lies broken and wingless on the street. After eons of fighting his own battles, he finds himself being rescued from a desperate situation by a half-starved teenage girl.

Traveling through a dark and twisted Northern California, they have only each other to rely on for survival. Together, they journey toward the angels' stronghold in San Francisco where she'll risk everything to rescue her sister and he'll put himself at the mercy of his greatest enemies for the chance to be made whole again.

Despite being told multiple times that Angelfall is the best angel book evah. I struggled to believe it, maybe this is because it's self-published and despite having read plenty of awesome self-published books I still tend to think of them as generally not as good as published books. I know, I suck and I'm not going to lie when I say that I really wish I'd read Angelfall earlier. I agree; it is definitely one of the best angel books I have ever read... probably even in the top ten or so books I have ever read period.

Yep... this book is a million kinds of awesome. Plus some.

The angels in this book aren't the bright, chaste, radiant creatures that you see depicted in the annual nativity play, nor are they the dark, twisted, emo bad boys that are so common in YA fiction. In this book, the angels are vengeful and merciless and absolutely amazing. As well as this, this book is semi-biblical but at the same time not overly religious - it was a welcome departure from the typical post-apocalyptic book and the paranormal aspects were fantastically developed as well. The more realistic aspect of the book is Penryn's mother's mental illness which was slipped in there and played a large part in the development of Penryn's character and making people care for the two sisters.

Each of the relationships in this book is fantastically written. the most obvious relationship is the one between Raffe and Penryn which starts off as two allies on a journey together but predictably evolves into something much closer. The relationship is developed so gradually that whilst it's obvious, it never seems instalove-ish or overly deep. The other relationships are also so well written, the relationship between Paige and Penryn is amazing to see, even though Paige is barely in the book in person my heart ached for her at the end.

Never once in this book did I feel able to put it down and when I had to I did it with total reluctance and I was counting the minutes until I could pick it up again. The plot developed flawlessly and the pacing never dropped below gripping. Twists came so often but the biggest twist at the end had me absolutely reeling.

I just... I really can find absolutely no fault in this book. Angelfall is the closest to perfection I have read in a long time.

Book released 23rd May 2013 by Hodder and Stoughton (UK)

Book received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review 

If you enjoyed Angelfall and are looking for similar books that I enjoyed, I would recommend checking out Bound by Sarah Bryant.