Hallowed by Cynthia Hand: Review

Hallowed
By: Cynthia Hand

Series: Unearthly (review)

warning: spoilers ahead for Unearthly

Clara faced her purpose and the forest fire. However, she is struggling to reconcile the idea that it was Christian she was supposed to save not her boyfriend, Tucker. Since she defied her purpose, will she be punished? And with the revelation that Christian is indeed a part-angel as well, how are they connected? When Clara begins having new visions, she learns more about the war between the White Wings and the Black Wings, and that deciding her fate isn't going to be as easy as she thought.

Unearthly is hands down the best angel book I've read. I loved the romance with Tucker, and the fact that Clara made choices for herself. And I was so disappointed that it seemed like so much was undone in Hallowed. There was an emergence of a love triangle. Despite learning more about Christian, I really feel like I don't know him. He fits the role of the beautiful person that the MC is destined to be with. And really, I just thought that this series was better than that. And, about halfway in, I was ready to throw in the towel. Only my love for Unearthly saw me through, and I pushed on.

I pushed on through the strange evolution of Angela's character. I think I liked her better when I didn't know her as well. Wendy sadly fell pretty far in the shadows and wasn't mentioned nearly as much as I would have liked. Guess it's hard to have a friendship when you have two boys fighting for you. And Tucker's character regressed into the jealous, semi-possessive boyfriend.

Redemption did come for Hallowed. There were some pretty startling revelations. (I thought I had the plot pegged, but was surprised by a few things. This is a harder thing to do now that I've read a lot of books and can guess a lot of plot lines). And, I'll be darned if I didn't get a little misty at the very end.

Ultimately, I'm going to chalk this one up to suffering from a bit of middle-book syndrome. There was plenty of plot to fill out the story, but it was done a little at the expense of a few of the characters. However, the ending was much more satisfying than in Unearthly, with a little less of a cliffhanger.

Where the book really shone (kind of pun intended), was in the angel lore. There are heavy Christian themes in the book. It was actually really nice. I am a little tired of the books that portray religion as cultish or childish, and this was very well laid out. I didn't feel beat over the head with the religion, and liked that it was essential to the story.

Things do heat up a bit more in Hallowed. There are some references to sex, (including an encounter that gets both sets of parents pretty darn upset) but there isn't anything explicit.

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