Unearthly by Cynthia Hand
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Page Count: 435 Pages
Overall Rating: 3 Stars
In the beginning, there's a boy standing in the trees . . . .
Clara Gardner has recently learned that she's part angel. Having angel blood run through her veins not only makes her smarter, stronger, and faster than humans (a word, she realizes, that no longer applies to her), but it means she has apurpose, something she was put on this earth to do. Figuring out what that is, though, isn't easy.
Her visions of a raging forest fire and an alluring stranger lead her to a new school in a new town. When she meets Christian, who turns out to be the boy of her dreams (literally), everything seems to fall into place—and out of place at the same time. Because there's another guy, Tucker, who appeals to Clara's less angelic side.
As Clara tries to find her way in a world she no longer understands, she encounters unseen dangers and choices she never thought she'd have to make—between honesty and deceit, love and duty, good and evil. When the fire from her vision finally ignites, will Clara be ready to face her destiny?
**This review will have spoilers. I've made my opinions on those highlighted in white, so you'll have to highlight them to read it. There's one spoiler highlighted in red. This one pertains to the ending. DO NOT highlight it if you don't wan the ending spoiled for you.**
Unearthly was a weird book for me. Not really in its concept, but more so in how I liked it. Everything was in the middle for me. It's not the worst book I've read, and it's not the best, either. It's flat out in the middle.
For starters, I didn't really feel the urge to pick this one back up. I actually sat at the end of class one day, knowing I should've probably picked it up and read some, mainly because my friend was absent that day and I couldn't talk to her, but I didn't. At the same time, though, once I picked it up, I hardly ever put it down. Not because it was a particularly gripping book, but more because it was really easy to read.
It was a pretty easy book to read, actually, and I think that's probably why it didn't get as much of a reaction from me. I'd expected it to be a lot heavier, have the stakes be so much higher than they were, but it was kind of more along the lines of Clara really wanting to be normal and her struggles with her feelings for Christian and Tucker.
Some things that bothered me: Some of the writing seems like it's trying to hard to fit into teen lingo. It's not poorly written, just has a lot of things that kind of seemed slightly immature for high schoolers. The word Dorkina was used in one of the first chapters and I cringed at that. Seems like something a third grader would say.
Some of the characters seem to be kind of shallow. Not vain, but kind of...underdeveloped. Tucker seemed to be pretty nicely fleshed out. Clara obviously was, but I was living inside of her head, so it's kind of expected for me to say that. Some of the other characters felt two-dimensional though.
There are kind of a lot of things that don't make sense, as well. (Spoilers starting in 3, 2, 1.)
For example,
how the tourist taking that picture completely forgot about Clara's hair glowing, but Tucker could not, would not forget about it at all. I understand that the situations are pretty freaking different, but you'd think that glowing hair would be memorable no matter what.
Second off, the one that completely, completely irked me.
If Angela could tell that Clara was an Angel-blood, why couldn't Christian? I mean, it's not as if Clara was particularly sneaky about it all the time, and Jeffery was definitely worse about it. If Angela could figure it out after three things, why couldn't Christian? I just don't get that one.
But I did like things too, as much as I semi-ranted up there:
I liked how Tucker and Clara did not have an instalove thing going on. They pretty much seemed to hate each other for a while and the chapters where their relationship is developed are among some of my favorite in this book.
I liked Angela and how I did not trust her at times, though some would probably hate that. She just seemed a little shifty. I liked Christian, somewhat. He sometimes made me angry, but so did Tucker and pretty much every other character in this book at least once. But he wasn't a complete jerk and I appreciated that.
I liked Jeffery, as weird as that probably is. He added some depth to the story and certainly seems to have a larger role in the next book. A lot of things do, for that matter. The sequel seems to hold a lot of answers to questions I had for this book.
I liked Clara, even though she was slightly moody and occasionally whiny. She seemed to have a reason for whatever moping she did, and I wouldn't say that it was anything like some books, where the heroine spends three quarters of the book sobbing over stupid crap. She had pretty legit reasons for being upset.
I really enjoyed the feel of Jackson Hole. It definitely has some sort of strange vibe, but not bad ones, either. I live in small town right now and I love Jackson Hole much, much more than I like where I live now. I'm just saying.
I enjoyed the mythology, however conflicting it may have been between the two people that were telling Clara how her world worked. It was pretty fresh and is a lot of what kept me reading.
Amazing Quote:
So often we only do what we think is expected of us, when we are capable of so much more.
Songs I listened to while reading:
