Emily May's Reviews > Hallowed

I am going to have to sadly admit that this series is not my cup of tea. I tried to like Unearthly after reading all the rave reviews but found it only okay, it didn't blow my mind like I was so sure it would. Hallowed was even less appealing to me, I read three chapters and even that was a struggle - but now I do think I'm starting to see why. I think if I happened to meet Clara in real life, let's just say she enrolled at my university, we would be friendly to one another, perhaps mumble a polite greeting when we passed in the corridor but I don't think we would ever be close friends. We have so little in common. Clara is, in many ways, the girl I have never been... nor really wish to be either (though, I would like to be able to fly).

(1) Clara is the kind of girl who will have relationships filled with sweet romance, hand-holding and utter tameness. I appreciate that this is a young adult novel and I didn't exactly expect graphic sex scenes - or, in fact, any sex at all - but "Tucker still has this notion that since I have angel blood in my veins he should try to keep my honor in tact" is practically Victorian repression.

(2) Clara cannot even admit to herself that she has the hots for Christian as well as Tucker. She dreams, daydreams and thinks an awful lot about the guy but "no, no, Tucker is my future". Who is she kidding? It's not like every reader doesn't know already that there's a whole love triangle thing going on... so why is our heroine being stupid?

(3) I read three chapters. In these chapters, apart from a quick recap of what happened in the first book, we spend all the time in the middle of Clara's daydreams of marriage and babies. Or experiencing kissing Tucker through Clara's mind, which is naturally out of this world, sensational, practically orgasm-inducing... or seeing visions of Christian, which is just bad, bad, bad.

(4) And why oh why did this book get so biblical? Three chapters, I must remind you, and I don't know how many times I heard about god and the bible. Look, my religious beliefs aside, everyone is fully entitled to believe what the hell they want - but that doesn't mean I want to hear it about it in chapter two. And a lot.

I could read the rest of the story but I can tell we are not destined to love one another. And that's okay, right now I have so many other things to read. To anyone who is put off by my lack of chemistry with this book, navigate towards Wendy's or Tatiana's review to see how it worked out for people who "got" Clara more than I did.