Review: Betrayed by Carly Fall

Title: Betrayed
Author: Carly Fall
Series: Angels of Affection, #1
Format: eBook, Received for review.
My rating: 3 / 5

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After police officer Jeff Waters’ wife leaves him, a darkness descends over him, causing anger and hate to to rage within. His self-control is tested both on and off the job, putting his life, as well as the lives of others, in jeopardy.

Liam and Adela, two former Angels of Death, have been reluctantly transformed into Angels of Affection – those angels who help humans fall in love – to assist in the war against the hate taking over Earth and the self-destructive nature of humans.

Their first assignment: helping Jeff Waters find love and saving him from the darkness threatening to overtake him.

-- As seen on Goodreads

* I received this book from the author via Rabid PR in exchange for an honest opinion and review. Thank you for considering me! *

Betrayed follows the story of two Angels of Death who are partnered together and re-assigned as Angels of Affection to help bring more love into the world. I went into the book thinking along the lines of the Grim Reaper being changed into Cupid. It’s not exactly like that, but the essence is kind of the same.

The story starts off following an Australian guy, Adam, when he was human and we witness his death and transformation into an Angel of Death. As he was pretty much a man-whore in life, he has to atone for his transgressions before he can take his place in the Fringe, the outer circle of heaven, for eternity. There are three levels to the Angel hierarchy; Angels of Innocence, Tolerance and Sin. Adam is cast as an Angel of Tolerance, delivering recently departed souls to the Fringe.

Hate is slowly taking over the human world, and the creator decides to step in. The decision is made to re-assign some of the Angels into Angels of Affection to help counter the spread of hate with love. Liam is one of those chosen and he is partnered with Adela, an Angel of Tolerance he met early on in his afterlife.

I liked the book. Did it blow me away? Not really. Was it entertaining? It kind of was! There were some things I liked about it, and quite a bit I was a little unsure of. There isn’t anything really unexpected. I didn’t find anything mind-blowingly unique, but it was a nice interpretation of angels in general. It leans more toward the traditional thinking on angels, and combining the Angels of Death with the role and duties of the Grim Reaper.

I mainly use my feelings, emotions and my reactions to rate books, in particular the characters. The more I feel for the characters, the more I connect. The more I connect, the more I like the book, and it accumulates on from there. If I feel what they feel, and I react – positive or negative, doesn’t matter – as long as I feel, I’m happy.

I liked the characters, but I didn’t really feel anything toward them. It’s the brain versus the heart thing – my brain says I like them, but my heart feels nothing. How can I make up my mind whether I genuinely like the characters when I feel neutral at this stage?

I have a few gripes with the style of writing. I dislike constant repetitiveness. Throughout the story, we are informed of the same things quite often, and it’s unnecessary and a little annoying. Also for my tastes, there was a bit too much internal monologue. We have entire chapters where the character is backtracking over what happened to them in their past internally. I love detail and a good backstory, and there is plenty of it in Betrayed, but in the end it became a bit too much. Some knowledge is wonderful and great to receive, but there is a fine line before it becomes annoying when you read the same thing worded differently three or four times.

I feel like I’m only focusing on the negative! I liked the story overall, I really did. I was entertained, but I have to be honest about the things that didn’t work for me too. I liked that we weren’t plunged straight into the story. We were given the chance to get to know the history of characters, in particular Liam, before he became an angel, and the build-up before both he and Adela became Angels of Affection.

The ending was a little abrupt. It took a long time to reach the conclusion, and once we reached it, poof, it was over. Everything is wrapped up from this story, there is nothing left hanging. The final few chapters are geared toward a sequel, so you know the characters will be back to continue the series. I’m looking forward to reading Forgiven, and hopefully I’ll get to know Liam and Adela a bit more, and make up my mind on them as characters.