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.

Halo by Alexandra Adornetto

Bethany is an angel who has been sent to Earth, along with her brother, Gabriel, and sister, Ivy, to fight the Dark Forces loose in the world. They have been assigned to the small town of Venus Cove, and in human form they begin their work, helping people to come together for good, and keeping a lookout for the Dark Forces at work. Bethany enrolls in high school and isn't there long before she finds Xavier and the two fall in love. Angels are supposed to care for humans, but not form Earthly attachments as Bethany has done. She and Xavier must fight the fact that at any time Bethany could be called back to heaven, as well as the Dark Forces emerging in an unlikely place.

Early to Death, Early to Rise by Kim Harrison

Madison Avery is dead, but still living on Earth. Through the power of the amulet she stole she's able to create a body. She's also now the dark timekeeper, in charge of the dark reapers, who take someone's soul (that is, kill them) before they have a change to ruin it by committing some kind of sin. Madison doesn't agree with what the dark reapers do, but then, she doesn't agree with what the light reapers do either. Light reapers try to get to a person before the dark reapers can, and give the marked person a guardian angel. The person will then lead a kind of charmed life. Madison wants to change things. She wants to try to talk to the people who have been marked for death and try to get them to make a better choice. Then no one has to die, or get a free pass. None of the angels or seraphs believe it can work. Madison really only has one chance to prove she can do it.

This is the second in a series, the first being Once Dead, Twice Shy, and it's not a series you want to come in in the middle of. There's a lot of back story, and Harrison doesn't spend a lot of time rehashing what happened in the previous book. If you didn't read it, it's going to be really confusing and you'll probably spend about half of Early to Death, Early to Rise trying to figure out who everyone is and what's going on and why Madison is dead, but doesn't seem dead, and so on.

I enjoyed this, and I think it would be a good series to suggest to kids who like supernatural lite - vampire romances, angel romances, etc. It's not really a romance (yet, there are suggestions), but it has a similar feel. Kids just like you but with angels! Or vampires, whatever. I liked Madison's voice, her worry and frustration rang true. The character of Ace threw me a little bit. I understand why it didn't explain in depth, but his anger was so intense and I just didn't understand where it was coming from. Man, he was a lousy person. Harrison certainly did a good job creating a character that we would feel no sympathy for and make it easier to understand the dark reaper's point of view.

While many kids might not go this deep into it, I really liked what Harrison was doing with looking at choice and fate. When you start reading the book, it seems clear that dark reapers are bad, and light reapers are good. It's all there in their title! But dark reapers aren't actually evil, per se, they're trying to save a person's soul before they can destroy it by doing something evil. The light reapers protect the person's body by giving them a guardian angel and the right to make their choice (even if it harms other people), but then the person is protected in all the bad choices they might make. How important is free will? What if other people die because of the choices one person makes? Should that person be allowed to make those choices, or should they be stopped? There are some really interesting ideas going on in these books, I hope they get to be explored more at the same time Madison is running around looking for her body and trying to get people to make good decisions.

However, bad title. Really, really bad. The first one was bad too. Let's try for a well titled book for the third, shall we? Carry on.