Review: Unearthly

Title: Unearthly
Author: Cynthia Hand
Genre: YA Fantasy
See it at Goodreads


In the beginning, there's a boy standing in the trees . . . .

Clara Gardner has recently learned that she's part angel. Having angel blood run through her veins not only makes her smarter, stronger, and faster than humans (a word, she realizes, that no longer applies to her), but it means she has a purpose, something she was put on this earth to do. Figuring out what that is, though, isn't easy.

Her visions of a raging forest fire and an alluring stranger lead her to a new school in a new town. When she meets Christian, who turns out to be the boy of her dreams (literally), everything seems to fall into place—and out of place at the same time. Because there's another guy, Tucker, who appeals to Clara's less angelic side.

As Clara tries to find her way in a world she no longer understands, she encounters unseen dangers and choices she never thought she'd have to make—between honesty and deceit, love and duty, good and evil. When the fire from her vision finally ignites, will Clara be ready to face her destiny?


Unearthly has a lot of hype. It’s one I’d been hearing about for quite some time. But it took me a while to finally get to it. Why? The main reason really was because I knew it dealt with fallen angels. And I just seem to have bad luck with this creature when reading. Sure, I really like a few, but I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to get into them. I get wary. Maybe it’s because a lot of cases focus SO much on religion--and well, to be bluntly honest, I’m not a religious person and I dislike preachy books.


So to get back to my point: yes, I was wary to pick up Unearthly due to the simple fact that it focused on fallen angels. Also, it had a lot of hype and this gave me some very high expectations. When I did finally break down and read it last month, I’m sad to say that I was sorely disappointed. And this even upset me because I’ve known a few of my friends to really enjoy this series so far. Unfortunately for me, it was barely above average.


It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, because I did, I just didn’t find the greatness in it by the final pages. It was sooo slow, most particularly in the beginning, and didn’t seem to pick up on any kind of interesting action until over halfway through for me. I felt detached and disinterested from Clara most of the time. I wanted to know more about her, who she is as a person, not just her purpose all the time. And I was disgusted with Christian. How could she have even been interested in the boy was beyond me. So he looked good? So what. He was not only a jerk, but she hardly knew a thing about him. Yet she kept focusing on him, completely ignoring anyone else who was better suited and treated her much better. Even when he pulled a jerk move (not going to say because I don’t want to put a spoiler), she pined over him, whining, and then forgave him? Only for him to leave later. Nuh uh. That’s what annoys me about a lot of romances nowadays, seriously.


I did like Tucker very much, and that was the (thankfully) turning point of the story. I have a soft spot for country guys sometimes…and the description alone of Tucker made me drool. I was glad that Clara wised up to him later.


The action was paced a bit slowly, and I think this is where the story fell flat for me. It took a while for me to get into it because of this. Toward the end, it picks up and I breezed through the pages. I enjoyed the author’s details and descriptions, and was really intrigued by the mythos of the fallen angels for the back story. I was left in the end still wanting more, so I’m sure I’ll still continue on to the second book in the near future. It wasn’t the highlight of my year, but it certainly wasn’t bad.


And P.S. The picture of the cover just doesn’t do it justice. You have to see it in person. It’s stunning.


3.5 stars!