I am delighted to be participating in Tribute Books' blog tour for Amy Lingor's novel, Until Next Time. I chose to review the book, so without further ado...
Information:
Title: Until Next Time
Series: The Angel Chronicles #1
Author: Amy Lingor
Publisher: Tribute Books
Target Audience: YA
Pages: 295
PoV: 3rd person
Tense: Past tense
Story: How does a girl choose between the one who steals her heart and the one who owns her soul?
Matt and Emily were created for a specific job. Raised and trained as the ultimate angel/warrior team, they are sent down to save, defend, judge and forgive, depending on the 'life' they've been assigned. What they don't realize is that the power of human emotions, such as love, anger, passion and fear can take over even the best of souls, causing them to make mistakes and follow paths that lead to confusion and heartache.
When the reason for their training is finally revealed, the angel/warrior team find themselves thrust into a world they know nothing about. Matt takes over the life of Daniel, a young man with a great deal of baggage. Emily becomes Liz, a girl living in a remote village who relies on nothing more than her own strength to survive. A violent storm erupts one night, and framed in the window of Liz's establishment is a frightening face. Let in by the soul of a Good Samaritan, the two visitors bring with them a past full of secrets that could literally change an angel's path and a warrior's plans.
From murder to redemption, this angel/warrior team must find a way to keep the faith they have in each other in a world that's ripping them apart.
Matt and Emily were created for a specific job. Raised and trained as the ultimate angel/warrior team, they are sent down to save, defend, judge and forgive, depending on the 'life' they've been assigned. What they don't realize is that the power of human emotions, such as love, anger, passion and fear can take over even the best of souls, causing them to make mistakes and follow paths that lead to confusion and heartache.
When the reason for their training is finally revealed, the angel/warrior team find themselves thrust into a world they know nothing about. Matt takes over the life of Daniel, a young man with a great deal of baggage. Emily becomes Liz, a girl living in a remote village who relies on nothing more than her own strength to survive. A violent storm erupts one night, and framed in the window of Liz's establishment is a frightening face. Let in by the soul of a Good Samaritan, the two visitors bring with them a past full of secrets that could literally change an angel's path and a warrior's plans.
From murder to redemption, this angel/warrior team must find a way to keep the faith they have in each other in a world that's ripping them apart.
Thoughts and impressions: The
first thing that struck me about this book upon completion of it is that the
prologue and the epilogue are separate from the story itself. For one, they’re
narrated in the first person by Emily herself at some unknown time in her life
and they’re in the present tense. Well, most of the prologue is anyway. Part
way through it slips into the past tense for a while for no discernible reason before going back to the present tense. They also don’t really make sense with
what information we glean from the story. In both, Amy is disillusioned with
her life as an angel but we encounter nothing in the book that would explain
why she has become so disillusioned. As such, I felt that they stuck out: they
didn’t make sense in the context of this story and though there are hints that
we may come to understand her feelings better after the next book, there could
potentially be an infinite number of books, or ‘lives’, before Emily gets to this present.
The main
body of the story is presented as Emily reading about herself – one of her
human lives. As an angel, she gets sent to live out a human life that ended
before its time but there’s a catch: once she’s sent to live a new life, she
doesn’t remember the old one. So the stories of the angels' human lives are recorded in books for
them to read. Until Next Time is
about Emily’s first mission to live among the humans.
On
Earth, she is forced to come to terms with human emotions and she has no
memories of her angelic self. For all intents and purposes, she is Liz – a young
Irish woman at the turn of the 19th century. The other half of her
angelic team, Matt the warrior, is also there but because their memories have
been wipes, they don’t remember each other.
Liz runs
the local pub with her friend, Faith. When two strangers beg for shelter during
a storm, both of their lives are turned upside down. The strangers turn out to
be two young men, Charles and Jason, who very conveniently turn out to be
romantic interests for Faith and Liz. This is where the book doesn’t just touch
on one of my personal pet peeves but really chucks it in the reader’s face. I’m
not fond of love at first sight at the best of times but in this case it
happens to four characters at once
and I just didn’t buy it at all.
What’s
more, Matt was also presented as a romantic interest. Of course, he’d grown
up with Emily and they’d spent all their time together in training. I can
understand where feelings came from in this case even if I’m not shown the
evolution of them – not that I’m shown the evolution of them with Jason either; they
just suddenly sprouted there.
I never really knew which of the two men in
Emily/Liz’s life I was supposed to be rooting for. I still don’t. Honestly, I didn’t
really like either of them all that much. I found Matt to be hypocritical when
he gets high and mighty because Emily went and fell in love with a human but he
did exactly the same thing. And Jason never grew as a character beyond his love
for Liz and his willingness to take things at her pace even though he wants
more from her (because he fell in love with her the moment her met her and
wanted to marry her, as Charles and Faith did, but she held back).
Another
thing that left me unable to appreciate Jason as a romantic interest was the
whole thing with Angela. N.B.: This touches on events shown in the last
couple of chapters so be warned and skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want
potential spoilers. It was far from romantic. Especially as Jason admits
that he never stopped loving his angel. It’s… I don’t know, I feel like Angela
deserved more. Every woman deserves to be loved completely by her partner and
Jason couldn’t possibly love Angela completely because he still loved Liz.
All in
all, neither of the males really appealed to me and I didn’t buy the relationship
between Liz and Jason, so the romance aspect of the book didn’t work for me.
I liked
the ideas behind the angels, though, and how they worked by taking on a life
that was destined for more but the human soul left the shell too soon. It
seemed a little weird to me that they didn’t really meet any other angels while
they were rushing around Heaven. Other than the well-known saints, that is.
Maybe in future books, hey? The saints and archangels that were around were all
fun characters very different from how I tend to picture them myself. I thought
it was a great twist to give them a sense of humour!
The
portrayal of Heaven was original as well, if a little confusing at times. Ok,
so it was the wands in the lightning room that confused me. I don’t know what
happened, whether I zoned out as their explanation was given (very possible) or
what. Despite this, I did like how Heaven worked and the scenes where the
angels were brought back to Heaven were a good breather from the scenes down on
Earth.
Obviously,
this being a book about angels, it has a significant religious aspect. My only
problem with this is that it sometimes becomes so Christian that it ostracises
readers of other religious beliefs. There are some parts that are particularly
preachy and I’d find myself zoning out each time. It could just be the
Christian fiction I’ve read but I’ve found that each time there’s a passage
that could be construed as insinuating that I, as a non-Christian, should be
pitied because I don’t happen to believe in the Christian God. I realise that
the author is American and that society’s view of religion is very different
there, but I find it insulting when it is implied that I should need to turn to
someone else’s deity to live my life right.
Other
than this, I enjoyed the book well enough and the epilogue has piqued my
interest enough for me to want to read the next book. Maybe then I’ll figure
out whether I’m supposed to be rooting for the angel or the human!
Style: I enjoyed
the style but the language was far too modern for 19th century
Ireland.
Final verdict: The book
never managed to completely suck me in: I chose to come back to it each time
rather than feeling the compulsion to delve back into it each time I had to put
it down. When I experience this with a book it gets 3 stars from me.
Buy the book:
Thanks for the review. I like to read reviews that show you a viewpoint other than the normal gushing of praises.
ReplyDeleteBook Enslaved
Thank you for having UNT on your site. I really appreciate you taking the time to read the book. I can say that the prologue and epilogue are truly for a purpose, and with the romantic feelings, I tried to present two very different types of love covered in this book: the one some people settle for and the one that was actually meant to be, and I hope that Book II will show that for you. Have a great week! And, thanks again.
ReplyDeleteRea, thanks for taking the time to read and review Amy's book.
ReplyDelete