What is truly HALLOWED

Hallowed
By: Cynthia Hand
Reported by: Julianna Helms

For months part-angel Clara Gardner trained to face the raging forest fire from her visions and rescue the alluring and mysterious Christian Prescott from the blaze. But nothing could prepare her for the fateful decisions she would be forced to make that day, or the startling revelation that her purpose—the task she was put on earth to accomplish—is not as straightforward as she thought.

Now, torn between her increasingly complicated feelings for Christian and her love for her boyfriend, Tucker, Clara struggles to make sense of what she was supposed to do the day of the fire. And, as she is drawn further into the world of part angels and the growing conflict between White Wings and Black Wings, Clara learns of the terrifying new reality that she must face: Someone close to her will die in a matter of months. With her future uncertain, the only thing Clara knows for sure is that the fire was just the beginning. 

-Summary from Goodreads
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Hallowed is like volcanic ash. It's not at all what it appears to be at first glance. It's this giant, restless, horribly beautiful substance raining down and destroying everything in its path, and it doesn't stop. It just keeps rolling and rolling until finally, you are slammed to the ground in a sudden of impact and, BOOM! you're crushed, you're just this endless ache.


There is something melancholy in the very voice of Cynthia Hand's writing that makes you want to whimper. This book deals with the emotional impacts Unearthly left everyone in, and if Unearthly was brilliant, Hallowed was suffocating in its overwhelming beauty and stupid, stupid destiny.

Destiny. This directs me to the unimaginably obvious split of TeamOreos. But Christian, even though I warmed towards him so much in this book, will never, ever replace Tucker. Tucker, oh god, Tucker Tucker Tucker Tucker. Cynthia, if you hear from me nothing else, I just want to know, why? WHY?

I'm this fury personified into someone who only feels sorrow. I feel like this giant wind whipping past everything, trying to hurt myself by isolation so I can at least claim some part of me back without having to claw and fight and plead for it. Because goodness only knows I stayed up until almost 5AM on a school night to finish this book, and then, when I am the most numb in my emotions, I started to cry, and cry and cry and cry and I was just so angry.

But I digress, and a rant does us no good. Still, I do hope you already have met the wonderful Clara and striking Tucker and he-who-makes-me-feel-ambivalent Christian. This trio has ripped me out of my reading slump and breathed life into me one whisper at a time, until suddenly, then, they tore it all out again. Everything about this book was amazing and terrible and fascinating and unbearable. I don't even know anymore. The angel lore was realistic (irony!) and subtle. The dialogue was truthful and still, snarky.

It's not the lovable characters, the heartwarming setting, and the passionate angelology, though, that sets this book apart. It's the emotional impact it had on me that truly makes it hallowed (bad pun?).

If you had a single feather, what would it feel like? Would it be soft and delightful, like a plush duck's? Or would it be heartbreakingly brittle and scarred, like someone who is lost, or has lost everything's?

Perhaps, for Hallowed, it is both. Or maybe, it's neither.