After all those vampires’ stories, I felt completely attracted to angels’ stories for a change. Angel Burn by L. A. Weatherly was appealing because it had all the elements of a good story. I started to read it and the evolution of the story was really catchy. Suddenly I could envision myself following closely Alex’s actions. Angel Burn is, before all, a teenager love story full of action.
Weatherly’s angels are quite similar to vampires, they explore the human auras for absorbing vital energy that maintain them alive, leaving their prey with side effects such as disgrace, weakness or incurable illness (cancer for instance), something that is known as angel’s burn.

Willow knows she’s different from other girls, and not just because she loves tinkering with cars. Willow has a gift. She can look into the future and know people’s dreams and hopes, their sorrows and regrets, just by touching them. She has no idea where this power comes from. But the assassin, Alex, does. Gorgeous & mysterious Alex knows more about Willow than Willow herself does. He knows that her powers are link to dark and dangerous forces and that he’s one of the few humans left who can fight them. When Alex finds himself falling in love with his sworn enemy, he discovers that nothing is as it seems, least of all good and evil. In the first book in an action-packed romantic trilogy, L. A. Weatherly sends readers on a thrill ride of a road trip  —  and depicts the human race at the brink of a future as catastrophic as it is deceptively beautiful.

Even when it was an interesting love story, and I love young adult’s love stories, sometimes I felt lost in the love story more than in the idea of good and evil fighting over humanity and how a teenager is the only hope for us all. It seemed that the more the pages passed, the less time for a climax and resolution came, it appeared that they will come in an unsatisfactory hurry. And indeed, I have the feeling that is one of those stories that could have been but was not. It had potential and put forward many readings. Maybe I got to think too much about the story but for me was interesting to explore this world where God was not mentioned but angels were the center of a sect, mainly because angels are associated as God’s good massager’s more than independent beings that are worshipped just because of them. This was one of those things that surprised me from the reading, the proposal of angels as independent entities that we may have been misunderstanding. We have been told that we have an angel behind us all the time, taking good care of us. This story seems to ask, what if they were after us, to drain our energy for their own sake.

Another thing I came to reflect with this reading was the human attitude towards other worlds. Do we have the right to destroy or modify other worlds in order to survive? Because that was what angels were doing in this parallel world created by Weatherly. It is frightening to think that maybe, they are part of us, an intrinsic part of us, and that we can relay and give so much power to those beings invisible to us.
I said it before; the focus on the love story is profound. Maybe I have lost the part of young and became an adult and that is the reason why I felt more attracted for the philosophical references and conflicts raised by the conception of angels as energy feeding beings that used humankind to survive than the love story between the characters. I can say that it was nice to read the references that situated the story in modern times, such as the mention of Nokia, IPod or the events of 9/11, but this interest contrasted with the confusion created about the narrator. Sometimes it was the point of view of an omnipresent narrator, others Willow was the one telling the story and other times it was told by Alex. The change from “we” to “he”, “she” and “they” made some parts difficult to follow. Not that made it unintelligible, but it was necessary to stop some times and reread to get whose point of view was being told. Nonetheless, the way in which the story was told was simply inviting. The dosage of information made the reader follow the actions without difficulty. This kept me interested at every point, even when I realized that the love story was the central point of the book, more than fantasy or angelic wars, which I expected mostly.
This may be a spoiler but I am looking forward to read more about Willow and Alex’s next steps not from a romantic view. Do not take me wrong, I liked their story but I would like better to know the way in which they solved the denouement situation. I am as well, interested in Jonah’s destiny, because he risked too much to be left alone at his own. Even when this book did not made me an immediate fan of angels or angel burn; I would read the remaining installments on angel burn/angel killers’ trilogy. ( )