Fallen Angel

Gr 9 Up—Ellie Faneuil, 16, has intense psychic flashes and vivid flying dreams, but no memory of meeting the irresistible Michael Chase in Guatemala three years earlier. This memory lapse was caused by her parents, fallen angels dedicated to the good, who sought to delay Ellie's destined meeting with him in an effort to postpone the "end days." Newly met Ellie and Michael cannot resist one another and begin to explore the powers that Michael embraces and Ellie denies. Possibly too-obvious clues indicate that she is "the Elect," the half-angel, half-human leader who will emerge when the fallen angels, evil and good, will battle for supremacy. Ezekiel, who is determined to bring Ellie to the dark side, confronts Michael and Ellie in Boston's Quincy Market and engages him in mortal combat. Much of the action in this apocryphal Bible-based fantasy takes place in and around a Maine high school, complete with Queen Bees and Carrie-like prom plans (using social media, not pig's blood). The relationship between Ellie and Michael is fated, passionate, and related to the exchange of blood, a detail that encourages Michael's early belief that he and Ellie are vampires. Terrell controls the pace of Ellie's first-person narrative, and her characterization is less vapid than that of many other heroines of contemporary YA supernatural romances. The plot is overconstructed, however, and the writing includes some amateurish conventions, including telling about characters' personalities rather than showing them through their actions. Still, the prose is clean, the action is fast, and the sexual heat between Ellie and Michael is intense but not explicit. All in all, teens should find this a reasonably satisfying beginning to a new series.—Janice M. Del Negro, GSLIS Dominican University, River Forest, IL