Review: Strange Angel by Lili St. Crow

Dru Anderson.
Night Hunter. Knife Wielder.
Heart Breaker.

Dru is a sixteen-year-old who has what her grandmother called the touch. It's a sixth sense that drives her from town to town to hunt evil - ghosts, suckers and wulfen.

Graves is a Goth boy who has a big crush on the new girl in town. With his shaggy hair and lopsided grin, Dru has noticed him right back. When a wolf bite threatens to change him she will have to have to keep her distance... or else.

Christophe had blue and ices and a killer smile. He has a hunch that Dru is more special than she realizes and she may be in danger. It will take more than his fangs to protect her from whatever, or whoever is hunting her.

This is an exciting YA story with action and suspense. Dru's history is slowly revealed throughout the book. Much of her early life is fragmented bits and pieces, memories that she can't quite put together. She lost her mother when she was just a child and her grandmother and father have never revealed the details of the loss. Most of their focus is on the present and how to defeat the evil of The Real World for another day. They move quietly to new towns, hunting and protecting, always in danger.

Interesting characters that are only starting to develop, and I look forward to learning more in the next book. As Dru continues to suffer great losses she must decide who she can trust. She can't afford to make the wrong choice because her very life is at stake. She and her friends may be teens but they are strong and resilient. On her own in the bitter cold of the midwest, she must use all of the skills her father taught her to hunt and survive. She has become the hunted and she doesn't know why or by who.

The author uses vivid descriptions and imagery -
The world fell into place, colors and sounds not running like tinted water over glass.
The buildings behind me crouched, groaning like they intended to get up and hobble for a hot bath.
But some were overdone. Graves' green eyes were described as greeny-gold, more green than hazel, green with threads of brown and gold, odd pale green, darker greenish, in just the first few chapters. I also noticed the same excessive descriptions with Christophe's icy blue eyes, the taste of oranges on her tongue and the bitter weather. The atmosphere is dark and dangerous and important to the setting but it sometimes bogged down the story with too much detail. It became a bit overwhelming and lost me at times. I think these issues can be easily resolved and since this was the ARC it may get trimmed down in the editing.

For those who enjoy this genre there is much to look forward to in this author's debut YA novel. I'll be reading the next book, Betrayal, to be released 11/17/09.

Thank you to the publishers for a copy of this book.

razorbillbooks.com
penguin.com/teen

Publisher: Penguin Group
Release date: June 2009
Pages: 304
Price/type: $9.99/paperback
Age: 12 and up, grades 7 and up