Knight Angels: Book of Love by Abra Ebner

AEbner-Knight AngelsWhen I discovered my newfound love of Urban Fantasy, I went out and purchased a bunch of UF e-books that sounded really interesting to me.  While I hemmed and hawed over which books sounded better than others, Knight Angels: Book of Love by Abra Ebner was one that I didn’t have to think twice about buying.  Unfortunately, I found myself more than a little disappointed in it.  To be fair though, I’ve recently been extremely busy in both my personal and work life so that could be the reason I never was able to really get into it.

When seventeen-year-old Jane Taylor witnessed her father’s death, something happened to her. Ever since, her thoughts have been consumed by death, going so far as to foresee the ever-changing deaths of those around her. Sixteen-year-old Emily Taylor resented her sister’s closeness with their father, who died when she was six. With the strange ability to read minds, she drowns the voices out with drugs, sending Jane over the edge. When seventeen-year-old Wes Green was adopted, he moved in next door to Jane, finding in her a childhood friend turned high-school crush. All summer, the pain in his bones seemed unwarranted. He was done growing long ago. When senior year starts, however, the pain only gets worse. The foreseen changes are not expected, and far too animal for his taste. When Max Gordon found himself standing above the dying body of an innocent seven-year-old girl, he saw in her eyes something he hadn’t seen in the century he’d spent roaming Earth. Her father was already dead, but there was hope to save her. Jane was her name, and already she was all he ever wanted. It was his job to bring her back, and it was his job to protect her – the biggest mistake of his life. When these four teens enter Glenwood High their senior year, no one but Max could understand the future ahead of them. Drawn together by blood and friendship, they each hide a dark secret that will soon bind them together. Max has to protect Jane, Jane wants to be normal, Wes wants Jane to love him, and Emily just wants the voices to stop… But their fate just wants them dead.

Book of Love is written in a pretty unique way.  Instead of having chapter numbers, each chapter is titled with one of the 4 characters first names – Jane, Emily, Wes or Max.  The chapter that follows each name is then told from that character’s point of view.  This was one of the things I actually really liked about the book.  It was intriguing to see the story from four different angels.  I found that at times it was easy to make assumptions about one of the main characters, based on whose point of view it was, then I’d later find out that wasn’t the whole truth or even close to the truth.  I liked that the book wasn’t predictable in that sense.

As I previously stated, Book of Love revolves around 4 main characters.  The first of these is Jane who I found to be likable for the most part.  Her ability to foresee death is something that she shares with no one, not even her only close friend Wes.  Then there is her sister Emily, whom Jane feels she has to look after since her father’s death.  Emily is the wild child with a secret that is tearing her apart.  Her ability to hear people’s thoughts causes her to turn to drugs so she can drown them out.  It’s through this ability that she knows all about Jane being able to see how people will die and it’s also how she knows that the boy she loves, Wes, is in love with her sister instead of her.

Wes, on the other hand, appears to have no special ability when we first meet him.  He is portrayed solely as Jane’s best friend who is hopelessly in love with her; a love that is not returned by Jane.  We also find out that he has been dealing with a mysterious illness that is causing every bone in his body to ache with constant growth spurts, which he should be too old for.  As it turns out there’s a family secret that he’s completely unaware of because his parents had given him up for adoption.   Last but not least there is Max.  Max is Jane’s Guardian Angel; the one who saved her life when she should have died with her dad in the car crash.  He is head over heels in love with her and has returned to Glennwood Spring, CO and has gone back to High School, just win Jane’s heart.  Unfortunately his return has brought back his brother Greg, a Black Angel who is determined to ruin it for all of them.

The chemistry between the characters in Book of Love ranged from completely lacking to smocking hot.  I had a hard time feeling Jane’s chemistry with any of the characters except for Emily, towards the end of the book.  Her supposed ‘soulmate’ relationship with Max had zero spark, but that could be because I found Max way too cocky.  I would have liked to have seen some humbleness and maybe even shyness from him.  I hated the way he was always over confident with her and how he always called her “beautiful”.  It came off as artificial to me.  Also, Jane’s chemistry with Wes was severely lacking.  They were supposed to have this long history of friendship when I mostly felt from them was awkwardness, jealousy and anger.  Maybe there was just too much negative history between them for their friendship to shine through.  The relationships I liked most in the book were Wes and Emily’s and Max and Greg.  The emotions that each relationship represented were expressed in a way that was enjoyable to me.

Now maybe it’s because Book of Love is the first book in the Knight Angels series, but I found it be rather slow moving and not very gripping.  There wasn’t much going on within the story that had me wanting more.  I never found myself excited to see what was going to happen next.  Although, like I said earlier, this could all be due to how busy I’ve been.  I’m sure I was having issues focusing properly.  Regardless, I do feel that a lot of things were dragged out and the end of Book of Love was lacking.  I never really got that “edge of my seat” feeling.  When I was done reading it, all I could think was “that’s it?!?”.  I’m hoping all of this is because it was the first book and we had to deal with a lot of “setup” for the rest of the series.  For this reason and this reason alone, I will probably, eventually, read the next book.

If you’ve read the series, please let me know what you think?  It is worth continuing? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Read Order:
Book of Love
Book of Revenge

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