3 out of 4 stars
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Life at Greymoors should have been a fairy tale. Beautiful clothes to wear, a maid and butler, horses to ride every day and private tutors. Christine and Caroline have it all. But their mother, Kathleen, believes that strict discipline is the way to salvation and beats them often for the simplest "sin." Simply being a few minutes late to their Bible reading causes them 2 strikes from the rod.
Kathleen's sister Elizabeth has a daughter of her own, Amelia. Her life isn't as opulent as her cousins, but she is loved. Until her mother dies suddenly. On her deathbed, Elizabeth insists that Charles - a shopkeeper that has helped her immensely - not let Kathleen take Amelia. He promises, but Kathleen is a forced to be reckoned with. Charles has no choice but to let Amelia go.
For some reason, Amelia's presence at Greymoors only makes Kathleen more and more angry. It seems that there is some family secret hidden in the recesses of Kathleen's mind making her seek absolution for her sins through these innocent children. What is this secret and will the three children ever be able to get out from under her grasp?
No Place for Forsaken Angels is a young adult book that explores heavy themes such as abuse, love and family. Not the easiest of reads emotionally, I would only recommend it for mature teenagers. However, each situation is handled delicately, only revealing as much as is absolutely necessary to get the point across. For that, I was grateful.
The best thing about this book was the characters. I fell in love with them. I felt their pain and their joy. I rooted for the good ones to prevail over evil; I mourned when that didn't happen. Even the secondary characters were well-rounded; no character was out of place in this book. Since this book was more character-driven than plot-driven, this was an absolute must. I'm pleased to say that the author executed this part of the story well.
Sadly, the editing fell short. The mistakes were too numerous to even count, having discovered the first ten without even being 10% into the novel. The errors ranged from missing apostrophes to missing words to incorrect tenses to incorrect punctuation. Sometimes they went so far as to change the meaning of the sentence completely. For example, one sentence reads: "For her, the demons have not been kept at bay, and the path to riotousness will I fear come at a high price." Riotousness in this case should be righteousness, quite a different meaning.
One further remark about the novel's content. Religion is a theme throughout the book. However, this is not a well-balanced view of God we are looking at but rather an extremely distorted one. For those that do not like any trace of religion in their books, this would not be the way to go. Also, those who get easily offended by someone who takes religion to a level it wasn't intended may want to avoid this read.
Having said that, I did get sufficiently involved in the book that I begun to overlook the errors. High praise from someone who leans towards being a grammar Nazi. Thus, I rate No Place for Forsaken Angels 3 out of 4 stars. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys realistic characters regardless of age. This book will not be easy to read at all times, but it will be rewarding.
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No place for Forsaken Angels. parts 1, 2 ,3
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