Howdy YAL!

To see full review click here: http://yalbookbriefs.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-temptation-of-angels-michelle-zink.htmlIt's not horrible. I mean, the writing was easy to get through and none of the characters were terribly offensive, I just couldn't connect to this book and I think that was it's main problem. Well, that and the info dumping.Seriously, I think more than anything else the info dumping confused me. I sort of got what was going on, but at the same time I didn't. It was really weird. Another problem I had with the book were the characters. I didn't feel like they were fully develop. I wanted to like Helen, but I couldn't. I just didn't really know much about her other than her parents are dead and that she's suppose to be one out of three special snowflakes left in the world. Oh, and there was something about her imaginary friend two and she's sort of kissing one of the other special snowflakes for some reason?People often ask why I review things that I did not finish. Well, I think the review is justified with the fact that I'm reviewing the reasons why I didn't finish the book in question. Plus, I don't review things that I haven't read most of. In the case of A Temptation of Angels, I made my way through about two-thirds of the book before I called it a day.Yeah...I was confused.The other characters didn't help much either. Once again, it was like I was an outsider trying to look in.The storyline was also confusing. I get that Helen and her friends were suppose to be these powerful beings, but if someone's trying to kill you shouldn't you try to hide and protect yourself rather than solve the mystery?Yeah, plot holes. There were lots of them.With the addition of info dumping, I really wasn't a fan.Also, despite the fact that this book was suppose to be taking place in Victorian England, I really didn't feel the period or location. The only time I really knew it was a historical was when Helen went on about adjusting her clothes to fight. Look, this is a pet peeve of my own but if you're going to do a historical don't alter the clothes. Make the character learn how to fight with her usual garb on. The Victorian period was all about manners, having the character in altered dress in going to make them suspicious. Also, some of the choices of names made me a little skeptical. Raum as a name for someone who lives in Victorian England? Galizur? I'm no expert, but those don't sound like the typical Victorian names to me. If I'm wrong, please feel free to correct me on this because this is the sort of thing I'm interested in.Best Feature: Intriguing Premises: The premises looks really intriguing and the way the novel was set up, I thought this was going to be an interesting read. So, I will give Zink the benefit of knowing how to pull a reader into her stories.Worst Feature: WTF is going on? Seriously, despite reading almost 300 pages of this book I really couldn't get what was going on and that's despite the horrid world building that was going on through dialogue info dumps. Let's just put it this way, when reading this book I felt like I missed something. You know like when you turn a movie on TV and missed the thirty minutes and spend the rest of the show trying to figure out what's going on. That's how I felt when I read this book. And from what I could make sense of it felt really cliche like one of those National Treasure movies (which I love, but that's besides the point).Appropriateness: There's some violence. I mean, people are getting killed right and left. The language was pretty clean for the most part and so far (up to page 300) there was just one chaste kiss.