Fallen Angels Fête: Welcome + Series Review!

In 2013, Alexa, Kelly and I binge-read The Black Dagger Brotherhood series together and hosted a BDB Party on our blogs. In 2014, Alexa and I wanted to continue reading vampire books around Halloween/Fall and decided to binge-read Vampire Academy. We then hosted a Vampire Academy Gala on our blogs. And then we stopped.

But a couple months ago, we found ourselves wanting to restart this tradition of reading paranormal books during October so this year we picked Fallen Angels by J.R. Ward. It's been so fun to read this series together! I can always count on J.R. Ward's books to entertain me and introduce me to a world filled with badass heroines and heroes, steamy romances and some crazy plot lines. Fallen Angels was no exception and I was totally there for it.

Today, Alexa and I are going to share our thoughts on the series overall and then we'll have a couple more posts to share over the next two days!

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My Thoughts on the series
Fallen Angels follows Jim Heron, a fallen angel, chosen to be the ultimate player in the war between Heaven and Hell. He's tasked with saving seven souls and helping them to choose the right path on the side of good. But as if that doesn't sound hard enough, he doesn't know who the souls are and there's competition. A demon is trying to sway those very same people, and Jim, to the side of evil. If Jim loses this war, there will be major consequences for Heaven and every soul and angel in it. Each book focuses on the soul in question and alternates perspectives between said person, the love interest (because it can't be a JR Ward book without romance), Jim and the fallen angels aiding him (more on that later).

I really liked the premise of the series and how it was all set up! As I mentioned before, I know what to expect from a JR Ward book, especially when it's paranormal, and this went fairly as I thought it would. In the end, I love the Black Dagger Brotherhood far, far more but that isn't to say I wasn't entertained by this too as evidenced by me flying through all six books. Covet served as a good introduction to the series and got increasingly better as I delved further. But I will say the latter half started to plateau a bit for me because some of the plots and insta-love (is there something faster than insta-love because if so, that was definitely happening here) got me rolling my eyes a bit.

One thing that stood out to me about this series, in comparison to her other books, was the agency of the heroines. Not a single one of them needed saving and even when certain heroes wanted to protect them, they were more than capable of standing up for themselves and that was evident from the start. I really appreciated that. The heroes are your fairly typical alpha males but no complaints from me on that front (except sometimes I wanted to kick our "chosen one" Jim Heron a few times). But Ward also did a great job of giving depth to the secondary characters too. In the beginning, I was a bit lukewarm on the fallen angels Adrian and Eddie, who were helping Jim, but after a book or two, I loved what they brought to the story and their dynamic.

Overall, while certain books are definitely stronger than others, I found the series to be enjoyable and fun. And if you're a long-time fan of BDB like I am, you'll appreciate that it takes places in good 'ole Caldwell, NY and that there's a few fun cameos and mentions that certainly made me grin. So if you enjoy paranormal books and JR Ward, check this out!

All the books in the series:
Covet was released September 29, 2009 by Signet.
Crave was released October 5, 2010 by Signet.
Envy was released September 6, 2011 by Berkley.
Rapture was released March 5, 2013 by Signet.
Possession was released October 1, 2013 by Signet.
Immortal was released October 7, 2014 by NAL.

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and we hope you'll keep up with our little blog event! 

1 comment

  1. This series is so thematically interesting! And it's also compulsively readable in the way that all of the J.R. Ward books I've ever read are. I'm so glad we collaborated and did this!

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with love,

Rachel