Review: Prophecy Girl by Cecily White (Angel Academy #1)

Prophecy Girl (Angel Academy #1)
Cecily White
Published: April 2, 2013 (Entangled)
Purchase at: Book Depository or Amazon
Review Source: Publisher-Provided Copy

Reviewed by: Amy

Rating (out of 5): 2.5 stars

Prophecy Girl starts on the first day of Amelie Bennett’s senior year at St. Michael’s School where she learns to be a Guardian. Descendants of the archangels Guardians are protectors of humanity against Crossworld demons. Amelie is a Channeler. Her kind is paired with Watchers and they become bondmates usually right after high school. This typically results in a romantic connection as well as being partners in fighting demons.

Lately there has been a lot of uproar in the Guardian community as many Guardians, including teachers at the school, are turning up dead. The rumor is that Graymasons, soul-swallowers, are responsible for the deaths. Nevertheless, it’s tense times at St. Michael’s and new instructors have to be pulled in left and right. Here enters Jackson Smith-Hailey, new instructor/trainer. Amelie can’t help but feel an instant connection to the hot, unattainable teacher. Little does she know that they are more linked than she would like since there’s a prophecy stating Jack will die, and Amelie will be the one to kill him, in five days.

Cecily White did a really good job creating a paranormal world with the descendants of angels working against the demons, while still trying to work and keep a relationship with the Inferni, a.k.a. vampires and werewolves. Inferni are Crossworlders who have a soul and therefore shouldn’t be considered a threat. There are a lot of conflicting views about this as some Guardians would just declare all Crossworlders evil and do away with them all. White did a good job of subtly touching on the issue of race without making it overshadow the main storyline, but that’s not to say it won’t be a more prominent issue in the next installment based on the events in this book.

Where the story fell a bit in my estimation was the relationships, romantic and friendship alike. We’ll start with romantic. At the start of the book Amelie has no idea that Jack even exists, and while he knows of the prophecy he doesn’t even know what Amelie looks like. It isn’t long, however, until Amelie has feelings for Jack and Jack clearly has feelings for her as well although he tries really hard to keep said feelings from progressing. We’re talking within minutes of meeting Amelie feels the connection. Amelie even goes so far as to tell her dad that they “hooked-up” after day one of meeting. Please note: “hooked-up” to Amelie means something entirely different to her than it does to her dad (and the rest of the world). It was way too rushed (with the five-day stipulation) and could have benefited from the book being longer so the relationship could have been fleshed out more. There were some good opportunities where the relationship could have started from and grown, but they just weren’t taken. With the threat of the Graymasons looming over the Guardians there was very little room for downtime. I know a lot of people hate slow parts of books, being that the action usually drives a plot forward, but they are essential too especially for character growth.

Now for the friendships. Sometimes when I’m reading a good book, I look forward to the friend interactions just as much, if not more, than the romance. The back and forth banter between friends can really set a tone for an entire story or at least an entire scene. Lisa and Amelie’s friendship left a lot to be desired for me. Lisa comes across as very superficial and degrading toward Amelie for many of their interactions. Amelie is no better with their other friend Katie whom she decides should be on cookie baking duty instead of out in the field with other Guardians. I don’t think it was meant to come across this way, but I couldn’t help getting that feeling while reading.

I will say that there was a lot that was predictable, but for everything I predicted would happen, White would equally throw in something else that I wasn’t predicting. Even when I would know how a story thread was going to end up, I was still interested to see how it would get there. White was very good at seamlessly setting up future storylines without it being too obvious. I enjoyed many of the secondary characters especially vampire Luc who, I believe will end up being more important as the series goes.

I think, since book 1 has already set up the world, book 2 will benefit more by being able to focus on character development. There’s a lot that happens to our characters in this book, next we have to see how they deal with it all.

Sexual content: Kissing