Eternal
By Cynthia Leitich Smith

Star Rating: 

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Number of Pages: 320

Date Started: January 7, 2016
Date Finished: January 8, 2016

Synopsis:(From Amazon)
At last, Miranda is the life of the party: all she had to do was die. Elevated by none other than the King of the Mantle of Dracul, she goes from high-school theater wannabe to glamorous fiend overnight. Meanwhile, her guardian angel, Zachary, demoted to human guise as her personal assistant, has his hands full saving his girl’s soul while planning a fast-approaching Death Day gala. In alternating viewpoints, Miranda and Zachary navigate a cut-throat aristocracy as they play out a dangerous, diabolically witty love story for the ages.

Review:
The premise of this book was so promising that I couldn’t wait to see what happened with Miranda’s life and unlife.  The reader gets a solid grasp on what Miranda’s life was like, her aspirations and dreams.  Unfortunately, Zachary was a bit harder to empathize with.  While many might find it endearing that Zachary is falling in love with the girl he is supposed to be the guardian of, some will find it rather breaks character of an angel.  Zachary falling from grace, behaving abhorrently, yet being forgiven without having repented what he did seemed too easy– as if his actions were infallible.

When Miranda changes, everything about Zachary’s girl changes as well.  Everything about Miranda changes when she becomes a vampire, and she seems to completely go with what her new master wants– no mention of her parents, and brief mentions of her former best friend, Lucy.  It is not until very near the end that Miranda seems to think about her parents at all, and never once about how her disappearance would have affected them.  Her interests, which were once so her, only seem to float around, coming back into play at the last possible second.

Action based, there is a lot of running around and attempts to make Miranda and Zachary seem normal.  While their outing into the city is brilliant afterwards everything seems rushed towards the climax.  For how long the book is, more time should have been spent preparing for the big fight.

The opposition of good and evil was very straightforward, and more importantly, the knowledge that there is a choice.  Your circumstances might have been dictated by others, but it is ultimately you who decide your fate and who you will be.

This book is unconventional and odd, and seems a fair bit inspired by Twilight.  Overall, this book was a pleasant quick read.

Author Bio:
As the author has no amazon picture or biography, I shan’t have one here either.