Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton

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Series: Angelfire #1
Copy obtained: e-ARC from NetGalley
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release date: Feb 15th
Rating: 4.5/5

When seventeen-year-old Ellie starts seeing reapers - monstrous creatures who devour humans and send their souls to Hell - she finds herself on the front lines of a supernatural war between archangels and the Fallen and faced with the possible destruction of her soul.

A mysterious boy named Will reveals she is the reincarnation of an ancient warrior, the only one capable of wielding swords of angelfire to fight the reapers, and he is an immortal sworn to protect her in battle. Now that Ellie's powers have been awakened, a powerful reaper called Bastian has come forward to challenge her. He has employed a fierce assassin to eliminate her - an assassin who has already killed her once.

While balancing her dwindling social life and her reaper-hunting duties, she and Will discover Bastian is searching for a dormant creature believed to be a true soul reaper. Bastian plans to use this weapon to ignite the End of Days and to destroy Ellie's soul, ending her rebirth cycle forever. Now, she must face an army of Bastian's most frightening reapers, prevent the soul reaper from consuming her soul, and uncover the secrets of her past lives - including truths that may be too frightening to remember.

It only took a couple of pages for Ellie’s voice to hook me, and then I couldn’t put then I couldn’t put Angelfire down. It’s pretty intense from the start. Ellie has been having nightmares and on her 17th birthday discovers that they may well not be nightmares, but memories. Of another time and place, where she is supernaturally strong, a hunter, killing monsters in the fight of good versus evil. 

She’s told that these things are real by Will. A guy who suddenly appears on the scene and yet she feels this connection with, like she’s known him forever. Which, as it turns out, is more or less true. They’ve spent hundreds of years fighting together, him as her bodyguard. Ellie just doesn’t remember it. Yet.

Ellie is a pretty typical teenager (although a well off one) who I found very easy to like. I wasn’t so sure about her while she was being so insistent that Will was lying, that she hadn’t seen some of the things she’d really seen. But then I stopped and thought about it, and really, having had no belief of the paranormal at all, then being thrown in to that world and told you are a key player in keeping evil at bay, is a pretty good reason to go in to serious denial! I really enjoyed her development over the course of the book, how she dealt with the memories, the nightmares, and the reality.

Likewise I really liked Will. He’s got that super sexy bodyguard thing going for him. He’s secretive and likes to keep things inside, but I fell in love with him anyway. He’s intense, and despite not knowing much about him for a long time, I always got this sense of so much more going on under the surface with him than was actually seen. It gives him a lot of depth when the facts are minimal and I really enjoyed getting to know him even a tiny bit, trying to figure him out. 

There is a lot of action in this book and every action scene was just spectacular. Several of them were so vivid they were practically playing out like a movie in my head while I was reading. Something that rarely happens for me with action scenes in books! 

A gripping, thrilling read. Great characters, fantastic plot and great use of mythology as well. There is what promises to be a beautiful love story involved as well, but it doesn’t start really showing itself until later in the book. It’s worth the wait and I’m hoping for more on it in book 2! The ending was fabulous, beautiful, sad and powerful. It leaves you in a place where you have some answers, but still plenty of questions and hungry for more. A fantastic debut and I cannot wait for books two and three! I’m just sorry it’s going to be such a long wait. A new favourite book and a new auto-buy author!