Book Review: Ignite by Erica Crouch (Ignite #1)

Well so if you've been reading my tweets (which honestly I highly doubt) you'll know my feelings as I read this book. It was complicated. I actually won an advanced copy at a giveaway, but unfortunately, I was at camp at the time and couldn't read it. Sigh.

Title: Ignite (Ignite #1)
Author: Erica Crouch
Genre: Fantasy. Basically, angels. And demons.
Publication Date: 11th June 2013
Warnings: Nothing really sexual, I guess. There's some blood and gore, but...argh you'll see what I mean.

Synopsis (you know I've decided to stop with trying to write my own synopsis' unless I feel the need to add something to it):

Penemuel (Pen) fell from grace over a millennium ago, yet there are still times she questions her decision to follow her twin brother, Azael, to Hell. Now that the archangel Michael has returned, threatening Lucifer’s vie for the throne, she begins questioning everything she has always believed. 

As Hell prepares for war - spreading a demonic virus and pilfering innocent souls to build an army - the lines separating the worlds blur. Fates erase and the future is left unwritten. Azael is determined that he and his sister will continue to serve as demons together, but for the first time in her life, Pen is not ruled by destiny. She has the freedom of choice. 

With choice comes sacrifice, and Pen must decide which side she’s willing to risk everything fighting for: the light, or the dark.

Review:

So if you read my Twitter (@deservesbooks) (shameless advertising much), you'll have seen my opinions on this book change. I received this as an advanced copy and it being my FIRST EVER ADVANCED COPY LETS HEAR A CHEER I was super pumped to start reading it. And as usual, before I started reading it, I took a look at the reviews. (At this point a couple of advanced-copy-receivers had already put up their reviews because they weren't at camp). For some reason, all the reviews seemed pretty bad. 

So I started the book, and as the story progressed, I understood why. 

Put it this way. If I had never in my life ever read a romance novel, had not had years of exposure to the sappy loves stories and gotten familiar with story arcs and plot events of typical YA romance novels, I would have LOVED it. Absolutely. Guarantee. 

But the thing is, I have read all those books, and I know the story arcs. And what Ignite basically did was take the most predictable, common story arcs of romance novels everywhere, and basically took the angel politics from Supernatural (if you've seen the rest of my blog you might have an idea) and put them together into one weird-ass book. 

So basically I loved the premise of the book. Although it had been used before (I'm totally fine with cliches to a certain amount), the world was beautiful and all that. I loved that it had been told from the point of view of someone not human. Other people might find it difficult to relate to, but I just thought it was different. And that was good. The writing was alright, though somewhat repetitive. I can't find any examples at the moment, but it was sort of: 

I did this. I did this. I did this. I did that. Then something happens. 

And this structure above was repeated several times. 

From the beginning it starts out rather predictable. And by the time the romance sets in (yes there's romance) you can see exactly how it's going to go down. And then romantic cliche after romantic cliche until I was on the brink of clawing my eyes out. Yep. It reached a point where you could just see exactly what was going to happen. Almost to the exact words. But the ending, while predictable, actually gave me hope. Because I think it has potential to separate itself from other books of this genre. 

However, our narrator, Pen, is supposed to be an age-old demon, but she sounds like your typical teenaged-girl protagonist. Her going oooh look hot boy hot boy without his shirt on ooooh was just a turn-off. I think it was pretty badly characterised. As was most of the characters. The only person I was safely say was excusable was Michael, but he, too was extraordinarily predictable.

So generally I didn't like this book. It started off with potential but just jumped from cliche to cliche. I think it still has potential, though. 

Grade: C. Still has potential.