The Space Between by Brenna Yovanoff

Daphne lives in a constant stasis of not sensing anything. She is cut off from feeling, and it is only her brother Obie who she feels a connection to. Obie is kind. And is able to leave the their current state of unfeeling and go into the world. Daphne is the daughter of Lucifer and Lilith, you know, the devil and the first demon? But because technically her parents are also an angel and one of the first humans, Daphne is different from her succubi sisters. She longs to feel the sun, taste food, and feel emotions, but has now way to do this.

Not until Obie disappears. When demons try and reside on Earth they are hunted down by Azrael. An angel solely focused on destroying evil regardless of the means. Daphne fears the worse. She sneaks off to Earth to try and find him, and follows the only lead she has: Truman, a broken human boy that Obie was trying to save. Daphne is quickly losing time, it seems that Azrael has let loose the terror known as Dark Dreadful. As Daphne tries to cope with losing her sisters, keeping Tru alive, she must also deal with her brother's secrets and how being on Earth will change her forever.

Now I was a bit nervous about reading this. Arianna had read the Replacement and not enjoyed it, and let's be honest I believe everything that Arianna tells me. But after talking to the publisher at ALA I decided to give it a go. She assured me it was more accessible than The Replacement and I'd been hearing some great hype about it on the Internet. (I also might have been influenced by the fact that I thought the cover was pretty).

So now to the verdict: I rather enjoyed this. It was a clever twist on the whole angel genre and the descriptions of events and emotions were rather wonderful. I would even go as far as to say that this was quite awesome. The tone of the book, the issues it deals with, and the narrative all tie in really well. Daphne has never really experienced a lot of emotions, she lives in a world where nothing changes, and it's all reflected in the stark descriptions of her perspective. Truman on the other hand feels too much, he is deeply depressed, on his way to alcoholism, and attempted suicide once after the death of his mother. His narrative is almost manic until he meets Daphne and we see how he changes because of how his world view changes.

I would love to tell you more of the things that I really enjoyed, but the fact is that the things I loved are some of the great plot twists that you don't really see coming. They're well done and add interesting depth to the story. Go forth and read this. It is excellent.

The Space Between comes out Nov. 15.