Review: Danann Frost Falls From Grace by Joanne Valiukas

Synopsis (Goodreads):

Danann Frost is thousands of years old, yet young for her kind. She is a creature of the Light, an Angel, one of the Seraphim; a race of beings that live beyond our world. She has been cast out of paradise and Fallen from Grace, all for the love of a Dark One - a vampire. The only problem is, Seth did not want her and told her to go and not come back.

Danann has made a life for herself amongst the vampires of this world and they protect her fragile nature. She and the vampire Asher live on the fringes of the human world; love and loyalty cannot separate them but trouble and vengeance are on their way. After two hundred years of enduring the crippling punishments of her Fall, Seth walks back into her life but he is bitter and angry and out for revenge. Thank God he is after someone else...or is he? Can Danann escape the dark intentions of her once-beloved for whom she Fell from Grace, or has she put all those that she holds dear in danger?

Journey with Danann as she takes the path to taking back her Light and ascending to be Angel once more. Will the Archangel Uriel surrender her Light or will Danann be doomed to walk in darkness forever?

My Thoughts:  This is one of those books where I'm going back and forth on how I feel about it.  I thought the story was interesting enough but there was a lot of repetition in what the characters were thinking and doing.  A lot.  It's okay the first time or two but when you're constantly retreading old ground it really slows down the book.  Beyond that, Danann has a few memory lapses which, while they are legitimately explained in the story, they take to narrative backwards in a very jarring manner.  The memory lapses and subsequent narrative backsteps contribute in a big way to the repetition.

I had a really tough time with the beginning of this book.  In fact, I started it then I put it down for about a month and a half before deciding to bite the bullet and just finish it already.  I freely admit that once the story kicked forward into the present it really picked up and I started to enjoy it more, but it was a tough ride up until that point.

I liked Danann well enough but, as I mentioned before, her memory losses were killing me.  She'd have these big epiphanies and then *boom* memory loss.  She'd forget everything leading up to the revelation as well as the revelation itself.  Seth didn't help matters with his secrecy and well-intentioned lies.  Actually, I can't even say that they're well-intentioned.  He lied to her because he was afraid he'd lose her if she knew the truth.  They were very self-serving lies.  Despite that, I liked him.  I can understand where he was coming from with all the pain he'd been put through.  I don't sanction lying to the love of your life over big life altering events, but I can accept it in the course of the story.

While the overall arc for this particular story is tied up, there are a lot of questions left unanswered.  I see that there's a sequel coming out in mid-2011 so I'm sure those dangling threads will be tied off and tidied up.  I'm still waffling over how I feel, though.  I liked it well enough that I want to know how Danann and Seth end up but I'm not madly in love with it at this point.

I don't know.  I have confusion.  And now I want waffles.

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