Review: Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton

Publisher: HarperCollins
Publishing Date: February 15th, 2011
ISBN: 9780062002327
Pages: 464 pgs

My Rating: 2.5 stars

Summary from GoodReads:
This debut, the first novel in a trilogy, is achingly romantic, terrifying, and filled with blistering action.

When seventeen-year-old Ellie starts seeing reapers - monstrous creatures who devour humans and send their souls to Hell - she finds herself on the front lines of a supernatural war between archangels and the Fallen and faced with the possible destruction of her soul.

A mysterious boy named Will reveals she is the reincarnation of an ancient warrior, the only one capable of wielding swords of angelfire to fight the reapers, and he is an immortal sworn to protect her in battle. Now that Ellie's powers have been awakened, a powerful reaper called Bastian has come forward to challenge her. He has employed a fierce assassin to eliminate her - an assassin who has already killed her once.

While balancing her dwindling social life and reaper-hunting duties, she and Will discover Bastian is searching for a dormant creature believed to be a true soul reaper. Bastian plans to use this weapon to ignite the End of Days and to destroy Ellie's soul, ending her rebirth cycle forever. Now, she must face an army of Bastian's most frightening reapers, prevent the soul reaper from consuming her soul, and uncover the secrets of her past lives - including truths that may be too frightening to remember.

My Review:
Well I have to say I was disappointed by this book. There has been a lot of hype for this book and when I was given a chance to read this book through NetGalley I was pretty excited. The summary sounded great with a different take on an angel story. When I first started reading the novel I found it to be intriguing but the more and more I read I began to lose interest. I found that a lot of the novel is dialogue based and oftentimes I found the dialogue to be a bit boring. There was always a cookie cutter response for every question. Don't get me wrong there were some things that I liked about the novel. I found that the premise of the novel was quite good. The idea of reapers and reincarnation was an original take on angel mythology. There were also parts that made me laugh, such as the state of Ellie's poor car. The thing that bothered me, I guess, is the fact that this book has hit on so many of the same themes as other books and perhaps I was just looking for something a little different. The romance between a teenage girl and her guardian/mentor figure has been done before many times. There was also the theme of trying to fit in with both the real world and also the paranormal world that seems just a bit overdone these days. I know I may get some flack for this review as it this books seems to be garnering tonnes of positive feedback; however I have vowed to stay true to myself and give my honest opinion of the book. That being said, just because Angelfire was not my cup of tea I can see the appeal for many other readers. Why not pick up a copy and see for yourselves?