Review: Halflings by Heather Burch

Halflings
(Halflings #1)
By: Heather Burch
Publisher: Zondervan Publishing
Published: Feb 1, 2012
Genre: YA
Rating:

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After being inexplicably targeted by an evil intent on harming her at any cost, seventeen-year-old Nikki finds herself under the watchful guardianship of three mysterious young men who call themselves halflings. Sworn to defend her, misfits Mace, Raven, and Vine battle to keep Nikki safe while hiding their deepest secret—and the wings that come with.

A growing attraction between Nikki and two of her protectors presents a whole other danger. While she risks a broken heart, Mace and Raven could lose everything, including their souls. As the mysteries behind the boys’ powers, as well as her role in a scientist’s dark plan, unfold, Nikki is faced with choices that will affect the future of an entire race of heavenly beings, as well as the precarious equilibrium of the earthly world.

 

 

When Nikki is attacked by a pack of vicious dogs (hell hounds) and is running for her life, three young boys intervene and save the day. Only they are halflings (half angel, half human) and they were only supposed to be observing Nikki and most importantly she was not supposed to see them. When the boys enroll in her school she is dead set on figuring out what happened that night and why. She knows that there is something not quite right about them but no matter what, she cannot seem to stay away.

Maybe I am getting burnt out on the YA genre but for me this book and I just didn’t get along. It seemed like the author was typing something that she thought readers would love. Nikki is a strong character that doesn’t swallow what anyone tells her just because it comes from the lips of eye candy. All the guys are gorgeous but Mace has the heart of gold and is the good guy that wears his heart on his sleeve while Raven is the James Dean of halflings. Of course Nikki falls for both of them and cannot choose which one she likes more but all that is pointless because she cannot have either of them since the unpardonable sin for a halfling is falling in love with a human. I just couldn’t seem to relate with these characters no matter how hard I tried.

The writing style was also a little hard for me to follow. It seemed like the storyline jumped around like a pinball game of emotions. My favorite scene to use as an example is when Nikki and her loyal dog Bo are out for a nighttime stroll when a bunch of hell hounds attack. The boys get there just in time to save Nikki but stumble on the scene of Bo in the jaws of a hell hound. When the boys fend off the hellhounds Raven quickly scoops her up and flies her away… OH WINGS! When he lands he asks her what she thinks of his wings. At first she is a little concerned about her dog and wants to go back but when Raven asks again about his wings she touches them and all things prior are forgotten. She laughs and asks if she will see them more often because she finds them beautiful. Lost in their own little bubble of feathers he unexpectedly snatches her back up and flies her back down to where Mace is holding a dead Bo in his arms… It just jumped around so much that I had a hard time following the mental thought of these characters. If I thought one of my cats were injured, I personally could care less if a unicorn went galloping by farting glitter in my face… I would fight tooth and nail to get back to them.

However, there were parts where the book carried the story at a steady stream and those points were enjoyable. Mostly they took place when something was happening, like in a battle or when they are trying to figure out what is happening. There are however parts that sort of seemed like they where spread out far more than they should have. I found myself wanting to skip pages a lot. There were parts in this book that I thought could have been hugely cropped to get the point across. For instance, there was an entire paragraph on the t-shirt that Raven was wearing in a scene. Not where he obtained it or the significance to it but what it looked like draped over his lean muscled body. The author went into the fine details of the shirt itself like the coloring, the design, the font style and color of the words written on it… when all the author needed to say was that he was wearing a vintage print t-shirt with a knight slaying a dragon that made his body shine like the bad boy angel he was. (that is all the detail I need)

I really wanted to like this book. I mean, don’t we all want to like the books that we read? However, unfortunately for me… this was just not my cup of tea. I stuck with it to the very end and even though some parts were good, I just had such a difficult time focusing on the storyline that I couldn’t get into it.

“I thought I smelled you.”
“Please Raven, try to refrain from phrases like that. People wouldn’t understand and it makes me want to do a quick sniff of my underarms.”