Halo by Alexandra Adornetto

Halo by Alexandra Adornetto
Release Date: August 31st 2010
Publisher: Feiwel and Friends
Add it: Goodreads
Overall: ♥

A taxi I caught recently had the craziest driver I have ever met. The minute I got in the taxi, he asked me if I was interested in politics, I said yes, I've studied it and I still try to keep up with the latest... He took that as an invitation to start preaching to me about the political party that he supports. He gave me the party's newspaper in which this political party compares the QUEEN to HITLER. They also have the nerve to say that the Queen is worse than Hitler and wants to kill off everybody because "YOU ARE 70% CARBON AND SHE HAS APPROVED THE INTRODUCTION OF THE CARBON TAX". Everything this taxi driver said to me was solely his opinion and the opinion of the preachy, ridiculous newspaper which wasn't my belief.

I felt the same sort of thing happened whilst reading Halo. As an athiest, I do not mind if somebody is religious or has different beliefs to me. However, the moment that somebody starts preaching their religion to me, I'm not interested. I just don't want to hear it. This book was EXTREMELY preachy and I'd like to apologise to my stepmum and Dad for random outbursts of frustration and laughter.

So, Halo follows three angels who have been sent to Earth to combat dark forces. Excuse me, but what dark forces? The plot of this novel was non existent and consisted of info dumps about nothing and long, boring descriptions of everything.

Every single character was flat and boring. Bethany was the single worst heroine I have EVER come across. Worse than Nora, Bella and Luce put together. She had the personality of a pole and the wits of a Barbie doll. She could not do anything by herself, she constantly clung to Xavier and thought about him when they were apart for 5 minutes. She also couldn't bear to watch the news for fear of seeing something bad. What the fuck would she do if she was shoved in the middle of a war zone instead of VENUS COVE where a few people have died of illness and some chick had a car crash.
Xavier was an overprotective, boring, popular guy with ALMOND shaped eyes and WALNUT hair (anyone else thinking that Ally likes nuts?) who did nothing but want to hang around Bethany and protect her. I'm sorry, but this is not a healthy relationship. If my boyfriend wanted me to spend every waking moment together, and if we got to the point that we felt like we would rather die than be without eachother for an hour, then I think we'd have a problem. Wanting to do that and just wanting to touch, smell, hear, see, taste the other person constantly is not love. This is Ally's problem. Seems to me, she is a teenager who has been raised perfectly, has parents who are still together, went to a private school and was published at an extremely young age and therefore has very unrealistic ideas as to what is evil, what is good and about the world in general. Also, Bethany should have fallen but she doesn't... Ugh.

Not only are the primary characters flat and boring, the secondary characters are too. Bethany's friends are the worst. I'm not kidding when I say all they talk about is boys, makeup, shopping and prom. They have no substance whatsoever. Bethany's "siblings" are also flat and boring. For instance, Gabriel (yes, that Gabriel) just fucking cooks all the time and looks moody on occassion, and Ivy cooks, sews and cleans. Wow. That's just awesome.

Everything in this novel is stereotypical and essentialist.. for example, ALL people who like music have messy, shoulder length hair and carried instrument cases, ALL people who were artistic liked to accessorise and wear berets and scarves. Also, she is extremely essentialist toward "goths", "'And what is the center of goth culture?' Gabriel said. Ivy looked at him, her eyes wide. 'Death.'" Oh really? So every single "goth" loves the concept of death and cemetarys do they? Live a little Adornetto, you may realise that not everything is black and white. It's ridiculous.

Ally not only has a habit of preaching religion, but also her ideas. For example, Xavier would like to get into design (which I hate, just because I want to throw a computer when using Photoshop) but isn't going to because "[It] Isn't considered a serious career, is it? The idea of having invested all this money into my education only to have it end in unemployment doesn't thrill my parents". Seriously, if my parent's told me I couldn't do Journalism or Public Relations, I would tell them, "It's not freaking up to you, it's my life, I'm determined, I'm going to go far". I mean, the people who work for DISNEY and PIXAR did design. If you're determined enough, you can do it (Oh, look. Now I'm preaching!).

Also, Wuthering Heights and Romeo and Juliet is mentioned throughout. Romeo and Juliet was not a great love story. Shakespeare was not an idiot. His point was, if you fall in "love" really quickly, you will be messed up and quite possibly die. Yeah.

After about 200+ pages, Ally suddenly thought "oh hey, I mentioned dark forces, better do something about that" and introduced the worst villian ever. JAKE THORN. Oh god. He wears black, he has green eyes, he has a tattoo, he is British and he rides a motorbike therefore he is evil. Again, with the stereotyping! After about another 100 pages, Ally thinks "wow, I forgot about dark forces again", and so some shit goes down at prom, then some more weird stuff happens then there is this weird battle thing between Jake and Beth/Xavier and Jake is "defeated" by the power of love.

Ally also seems to have a problem with men (who aren't walnut-haired and named Xavier) in general. "Although the boys looked dashing in their tuxedoes, they were only really there as escorts; the night clearly belonged to the girls", so really, boys can't enjoy themselves. Are girls just controlling bitches who just use men as an accessory? Enough with the preaching of your ideas Adornetto, go away.

I think I read somewhere that Ally doesn't even have an editor. IT SHOWS. If she had a good editor, a good 100 pages could have been cut from this garbage. This book was the most apalling thing I have ever read and I don't appreciate having the author shove their beliefs down my throat.

Overall: TERRIBLE.