Hades (Halo #2) by Alexandra Adornetto

Heaven Help Her.

Bethany Church is an angel sent to Earth to keep dark forces at bay. Falling in love was never part of her mission, but the bond between Beth and her mortal boyfriend, Xavier Woods, is undeniably strong. But even Xavier’s love, and the care of her archangel siblings, Gabriel and Ivy, can’t keep Beth from being tricked into a motorcycle ride that ends up in Hell. There, the demon Jake Thorn bargains for Beth’s release back to Earth. But what he asks of her will destroy her, and quite possibly, her loved ones, as well.

The story that Alexandra Adornetto built in her New York Times-bestselling debut, Halo, comes alive in action-packed and unexpected ways, as angels battle demons, and the power of love is put to the test.

What is going on with Young Adult books recently? This book, which I received for free as a review copy, was just awful.

I haven’t read the first in the series, Halo, but the plotline of the sequel is so simple that there was absolutely no need to go out of my way to get the first one. I wouldn’t have spent the money anyway. This book is badly written, that’s the plainest way that I can find to describe the sheer triteness that is this collection of pages. Even though it is a book about angels, I didn’t expect to find such a large amount of preaching. It is not believable to have characters human and angelic alike, spewing Bible verses in the middle of fight scenes. It was distracting and added nothing to the story. The whole plot-line is held together by thin threads, so thin that I feared it would fall apart every few pages. One other thing, Hades is the Greek underworld, so what’s it doing in a Christian book? Then again, naming it Hell would probably have been giving away too much about what the reader was about to embark on.

The characters themselves are one-dimensional, all of them, from angels to demons to humans. The one that is the most annoying is Bethany, the main character. She never manages to have a thought of her own, not a single idea passes through her little brain without someone else placing it there. She is, of course, obsessed with her boyfriend and she feels that she doesn’t deserve him. Okay, she is an ANGEL and he is a human. Does that make sense to anyone? How can an angel not be good enough? She gets into all kinds of problems from which she has to get rescued by other people, mostly men. Awful to have teen girls reading this.

If I were into book burning, this one would definitely make the list, so unless you enjoy a good laugh at an author’s expense, I’d stay away.