I stumbled across this 30 day book challenge by The Chronicles of Radiya and decided to give it a try. Hopefully it will lead to 30 consecutive days of blogging that liven up the blog a bit and give us a chance to get to know each other a little better.
Day 11: A Book You Hated Really Didn’t Like
After seeing that one of the quotes on the front page was taken from Beyonce’s Halo, it’s easy to say that I didn’t have a great first impression of the book. I have nothing against her music (and, you know, she did just cut her hair to look like mine which is pretty fantastic) but if you’re going to pick a quote for the front of your book, you would think that you’d choose something other than “baby, I can see your halo / you know you’re my saving grace.” Yes, it has to do with angels, but… just no.
The characters were all incredibly shallow and unlikeable. When Bethany wasn’t telling you how much she loved and needed Xavier (who she had just met; yay for instalove) she was reminding you that she’s an unnaturally beautiful angel. Not that you really got to see her use any of her angel powers; aside from flying and occasionally healing people, she sat around, attended school, and pined over hot human boys. Her friends were only there to emphasize how flawless and beautiful Bethany is, and their conversations are the stereotypical sort that would cause this book to fail the Bechdel Test – which is kind of sad considering the fact that the author is female and was a teenager at the time she wrote this book.
As for the plot? Well, there is no plot. There’s over 500 pages of… nothing. Unless you count pages upon pages of pining over a brooding hot guy to be a plot, which I don’t. The dark forces that the synopsis mentions aren’t involved in the story at all until the very end of the book because (of course) there are two more books in the series and you’ve got to draw the story out somehow, right?
I honestly have no idea how I managed to finish reading Halo, but I disliked every minute of it. And yet I still pick up books based solely on their pretty covers…. I guess I’ll never learn.
