Halo isn’t my type of book! Nothing interesting happens; it takes about 8 chapters to get into the book and then it’s just way too preachy and goes on and on. The story is based in one area, never leaving the town where they first start. I think it would be more interesting if they kind of ventured into other towns or… something.

Everything must be written and described in great detail. I’m not saying a few descriptive words are bad, I’m saying when you do it too much it gets to be really annoying. One area where Halo goes on and on is Xavier - whenever Benathy’s not with Xavier she sits there and talks about him for ages. I got sick of hearing about Xavier’s every move and perfection.

My patience isn’t the best either. Nothing happens for a long time and if I didn’t have to review this I wouldn’t have bothered finishing.  The book dragged and when you thought that something interesting might be going to happen it would be a small little paragraph and then we’d go back to Xavier and Beth’s relationship.

If I were to have a favorite character it would be Molly. I don’t usually tend to have girls as favorite characters, and especially ones who I would never think of being friends with, but Molly was really only one of the people who were normal. She brought life to everything. When she wasn’t around everything was dull and based around Xavier’s and Beth’s relationship. Molly was an easy going character who I thought was quite interesting.

SPOILER ALERT: highlight to read:
My favorite moment was when she was alone with Jake, the boy who was sent to earth to make earth evil and allow evil spirits to take over peoples bodies. Bethany wanted to save her friend Molly’s body from being taken over by a demon so she let Jake take her instead and Jake ended up taking  Bethany to a dungeon type of room. This was the most interesting part by a long shot, because Jake was as his normal self and didn’t pretend to be innocent. He acted how he usually would act and you got to see the real Jake thorn. Sadly this was towards the end and it only lasted about 5 paragraphs.

One of the reasons I didn’t like this book was because of the flow. Alexandra Adornetto would write things so that they were viewed to the max. She would use two pages to blab on about unimportant things and I would lose concentration and drift off and just read until it finally picked up. I got to the point where I missed out on a lot of things and had to re-read it.

Even though I don’t like it, I know a lot of people would. It’s more of a straight romance book and I’m more into paranormal books. Overall, I think it could be a really good book … if more stuff happened.

Halo threatens to be the first in an epic series and although an enjoyable read, this Teen Paranormal suffers dreadfully from an overabundance of insightfulness.

Celestial beings never pretended to understand the intensity of human relationships; but I found it amazing how humans could allow another person to take over their hearts and minds. It was ironic how lover could awaken them to the wonders of the universe, while at the same time confine their attention to one another.

Halo is similar to Twilight, with Angels instead of vampires, but I did find the overt moralising distracted from the story. Whereas Stephanie Meyer put telling the story first, I found myself wondering why we had to make such a big deal about the “no sex before marriage” issue in Halo.

I, obviously, don’t like overly religious ideas in my fantasy, Halo was ‘nice’. There wasn’t any attempt start ‘bashing’ other forms of religion. Religion wasn’t the bad guy, and I appreciated this.

Although I don’t like overly religious ideas in my fantasy, Halo was ‘nice’. There wasn’t any attempt start ‘bashing’ other forms of religion. Religion wasn’t the bad guy, and I appreciated this. However, I don’t like religion to be as overt as it is in Halo, but the storyline is one that unfortunately is based around the Christian doctrine rather than a generic spiritual ideal that could appeal to anyone. We have three angels, Gabriel, Ivy and Bethany, who have come to earth to bring light and love to man-kind, starting in the small town of Venus Cove, and one of their goals is to bring people back to the church; leading by example.

Thankfully there is more to the story that this, we also have forbidden love, which although chaste, still provides a wonderful exploration of first love. 

Halo is a light and enjoyable reading experience, but there is a requirement for a suspension of belief to really enjoy it; the characters are definitely characters, suffering from a lack of realism. Xavier, our hero, is the tragic-Mr Popularity. He’s school captain, head of the rugby team, but was dealt a devastating blow when the love of his life was killed a few years earlier. He of course has never got over this, and despite the girls at his school throwing themselves at him (because they’re all a little sex crazed for some reason), he doesn’t even notice them... until Bethany comes to town.

Watching Bethany ‘discover’ the earthly plain really was fun. Although incredibly descriptive, it was lovely the way Ms Adornetto was able to use this idea to explore the things that most people take for granted, or don’t often get the chance to really appreciate, even little things like the feeling of a breeze on your skin. The entire story is littered with quite beautiful descriptions of the world we live in, and Ms Adornetto certainly manages to bring the world to the reader in a new and beautiful light.

“But I was an angel in the purest, most vulnerable form. I was naive and trusting, young and fragile. I could feel pain because years of wisdom and experience did not protect me from it.”

But the plot... well, it’s a little predictable. It’s also big. There are a lot of side paths taken, sadly most of these provide the religious element and the story would have been much tighter with these removed; we don’t really need to know that Ivy does volunteer work at the church, or that the church is gaining parishioners. I am also not quite sure the point behind introducing a dog – I’m hoping that this subplot will become relevant in the next book, otherwise it was just a way for us to be introduced to the irrelevant subplot of charity work in the old-folks home.  Of course, I am assuming that the main plot was good versus evil and young forbidden love; but it may have been about getting coverts to the Christian faith.

Halo is very light and the story overly descriptive, but it still manages to be a very enjoyable read.