Strange Angels by Lili St. Crow (Strange Angels #1)

I'm somewhat new to the paranormal genre in general. I have always loved reading, but really found reading vampire books addicting and seriously enjoyable. It brought back my love for reading, and when I couldn't find books at the bookstore on vampires I branched out into werewolves; I never thought I would continue that into the zombie realm, or the paranormal horror. After spending some time in book forums, the idea of those books started to become intriguing. I picked this book to start with for several reasons. 1) It's YA, which in general I don't gravitate to, but I figured it would be a tamed down version of these types of books. 2) It's written by a very well known author who a lot of people love (even though I myself have never read her).

I surprisingly have a lot to say about this book. This was in no way what I thought it was going to be. I was expecting a full on book about Zombies, which I was completely wrong about. Really there was only one zombie in the entire book and it was a very short appearance. Dru is a great character, a young girl who is literally forced to figure out how to fend for herself very suddenly after her father becomes a zombie and she has to kill him.

Before I get into the specifics of the book I want to point out that I had a hard time reading this book, in fact I started it several times, starting in June. I felt like the book was so slow. And not only was it slow but it didn't keep my attention so when I would take a break from it I would have to start reading it again from the beginning to even remember what happened. I think St. Crow spent so much time trying to establish the characters and the back story without actually doing so during action that it became almost tedious to read the first half of the book. However after the first part of the book, the action started to pick up and it became a lot easier to read. I'm hoping that later down the line in the serious they won't start off that slow because the back story has already been established.

Graves is a really interesting character to me, even more so than Dru. Clearly the book revolves around Dru, but along her journey she finds Graves. Graves clearly is a nice guy, who extends himself to help Dru in her time of need, without really even knowing her. Throughout the book it is revealed that he is also on his own, and really living on his own down to a science, he knows how to survive on his own. In contrast Dru has always had someone to take care of her, and even though she had been trained by both her father and grandmother, the second she is on her own completely she really has no idea what to do. Graves really helps her out in the beginning and then helps to give her a purpose. Graves' wanting to help her ends up exposing him to a world he didn't even know existed. Not only does he become aware of the creepy crawlies of the Real World but he becomes one of those beings he didn't know existed.

Really i think this book is about the two characters, Graves and Dru, finding their way, and really finding out who they are. Graves suddenly becoming a werewolf, and being launched into a world he knows nothing about. And Dru, who believes she knows what she is, and believed that she knew a lot about the Real World, is suddenly told she is something completely different, she's not fully human, and all of the information she knew about the Real World barely scratched the surface. And now that these two people know who they are I have a feeling that the next book is going to be about the two of them finding their respective places within this world.

While I wish the book would have been more interesting to start with, it redeemed itself in the end, and made me interested to find out what happens in the next book. I also think this is one of the better YA books. YA books in my opinion normally end up being good or really bad, there really is no in between. And thankfully this book falls into the good category.

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