Angel in the Shadows, Book 1: # 1 (Angel Series) (The Angel Series)

A fifteen year old girl has a gift.She can see angels and demons (dark angels.)While the book has a great spiritual message, I think it's much too much pressure for a young girl to have to save everyone all the time and not be able to live a normal life.This story feels written and told by a teen as well. The writing is extremely simplistic and feels like you're reading someones diary or an essay for your English class more then reading a book, but since this was written for ages 13-16, it makes sense for that age group I suppose.One may even think it nice to have daily guidance of an angel in the life of teens to help pave the way for better choices and obtain stronger faith, but that's not how it works.While that would be nice, God expects us to have complete faith in him and that unseen evil walks among us and God does allows both good and bad things to happen to all of us. We're given free will to make our own choices.While I seriously doubt God would EVER allow a 15 yr. old girl to carry such a heavy burden of fighting demons all day long, this book IS in the fantasy category and we can be thankful this doesn't happen in real life.Simple writing. Very simple. I'd like to mention to the author on words like "check-in" (used frequently during the summer camp chapters) should be hyphened or not hyphened (both are acceptable,) but choose one. Half were used with the hyphen and half were not.This story had its typos, but was so much cleaner than many others out there, that it was nice for a change and one of the reasons for the three stars. I gave a higher rating for a positive message for young teens as well.All in all, a nice book for ages 13-16, but not adults or even "younger" adults.

Let me start off my review by clearly stating - this book isn't bad. It reads well and moves quickly. It's clean, polished, and generally enjoyable. The concept is a great one - a modern day teenage girl discovers that she can see angels and demons. She spends the book trying to reconcile her ordinary life with the extraordinary responsibilities and dangers that come with her unusual gift.My favorite part of the book's premise was the very real-world way in which our heroine was expected to fight her spiritual battles. This is not a story of tapping into an "unknown" power to do unimaginable things, but an entertaining demonstration of how the very simple choices that we make in our everyday lives effect eternity.That being said, I had two fundamental issues with the book.The first one (which is no fault of the author) is that it reads a little young for my taste. A high school girl who can see angels and demons? An admittedly cool premise - and one I'm sure would appeal much more to young adults than it did to me. I just had a hard time relating to someone whose "ordinary" life felt so unreliably young. But like I said - that's my problem.The second, which irked me a little more than the first, was that for all it's emphasis on angelic and demonic interaction, much of the book ended up feeling ... well, ordinary. Once our protagonist got over the initial shock of interacting with spiritual beings, the novelty wore off for the reader as well. Suddenly it felt a lot more like high school drama (with admittedly high spiritual stakes) than a supernatural thriller.So if you're young (or like ya books) and you don't mind a little high school drama thrown into your spiritual stories, then I'd recommend this book as a fun read.

I really wanted to like this book. It’s got an interesting premise, and I’d love to see some great Christian versions of the popular paranormal YA genre. But this book is just terrible. Grammar and spelling errors run rampant, the characters are boring and unbelievable, and the author really needs to learn the meaning of “show, don’t tell.” Not to mention that there’s really no overcoming of obstacles by the main character. Despite the huge, eternal stakes, every challenge the main character faces is either easy or impossible, and if it’s impossible, she just gives up. And since there’s always an angel around to help her out, any decision-making is out of her hands as well. Not to mention the fact that it doesn't conclude, it just ends abruptly. Still, I do like the basic concept of the story, and I think that in a more talented, experienced writer’s hands, it could have been good, but this just isn’t. Which is incredibly disappointing.