REVIEW: Heaven by Alexandra Adornetto

Title: Heaven (Halo #3)

Author: Alexandra Adornetto

Publication Date: August 21^st 2012

Publisher: Harper Collins

Format: Paperback

Pages: 422

Rating: 4/5
Blurb: Only sixteen when she started the series, Ally Adornetto knows how teen hearts beat, and this long-awaited conclusion is certain to be her most popular book yet.

Bethany, an angel sent to Earth, and her mortal boyfriend, Xavier, have been to Hell and back. But now their love will be put to its highest test yet, as they defy Heavenly law and marry. They don’t tell Beth’s archangel siblings, Gabriel and Ivy, but the angels know soon enough, and punishment comes in a terrifying form: the Sevens, who are rogue angels bent on keeping Beth and Xavier apart, destroying Gabriel and Ivy, and darkening angelic power in the heavens.

The only way Bethany and can elude the Sevens is to hide in the open, and blend in with other mortals their own age. Gabriel and Ivy set them up at college, where they can’t reveal their relationship, and where there is still danger around each corner. Will Bethany be called back to Heaven – forever – and face leaving the love of her life?

Review: I’ll be the first one to admit that I wasn’t a massive fan of Halo, I enjoyed Hades but I didn’t know quite how I would feel about the conclusion of this series. That is the major reason why I didn’t pick up this book sooner- I’d seen it around plenty of times in bookstores and elsewhere but I wasn’t sure at those times whether I even wanted to finish this series. Eventually I spied a copy in my school library, told myself to suck it up and just read the last book and then another series would be completed. Even after that, this book sat on my shelves for a good two weeks before I picked it up, read 26 pages and put it right back down again. I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t subject myself to the torture I thought this book would be after those first couple of pages. It took me another week before I picked it up again, and this time I read it for real.

Despite my initial fears, it wasn’t terrible. For a while there I was worried, I actually had to force myself to get through some of the chapters, while others I just breezed through without any thought to it at all. After the first couple of chapters or so, I realized that for the majority of the book I was actually enjoying what I was reading. I was never really a big fan of Beth or Xavier, but for some reason I really loved Ivy (odd, I know) but by far, my favourite character was Jake, so I was a little sad when he didn’t really appear in this one at all (trying to avoid spoilers here). I was kind of hoping that he would be in it a lot more, though I was glad to see the end of a love triangle- there were actually moments when that it seemed like it was going to go down that road again, but those fears were quickly diverted and I was happy again. 

I wasn’t really into the whole Gabriel/Molly thing, at least I was until this book and then I realised how much I didn’t want it. Speaking of love, I would have liked to see part of the plot not revolve completely around the love of Beth and Xavier- I get it, they love each other lots, it’s forbidden etc. etc. Can we please have something a little different?

Finally, that ending. It wasn’t what I was expecting to happen, but I don’t know how to describe how I felt about it. I was happy the series was over, but also slightly disappointing in the end- I’m not even really sure.

If you’d like to read my reviews of Halo and Hades, you can find them here and here respectively.