Review: On a Dark Wing by Jordan Dane

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

THANK YOU TO NET GALLEY AND HARLEQUIN FOR ALLOWING ME TO REVIEW THIS BOOK AND GIVE MY HONEST OPINION

Synopsis:

The choices I had made led to the moment when fate took over. I would learn a lesson I wasn't prepared for. And Death would be my willing teacher.

Five years ago, Abbey Chandler cheated Death. She survived a horrific car accident, but her "lucky" break came at the expense of her mother's life and changed everything. After she crossed paths with Death—by taking the hand of an ethereal boy made of clouds and sky—she would never be normal again.

Now she's the target of Death's ravens and an innocent boy's life is on the line. When Nate Holden—Abbey's secret crush—starts to climb Alaska's Denali, the Angel of Death stalks him because of her.

And Abbey finds out the hard way that Death never forgets.

Review:

This is one of the hardest reviews I've had to write. Mostly because if it hadn't been under the Harlequin Teen banner I probably wouldn't have picked it up. Saying that, I'm surprised Harlequin DID add this one to their portfolio. The story not only doesn't feel like a Teen Romance, it also has adult POV's and an awful lot of waffly jargon about mountain-climbing that I'm sure will put off most teens who think about reading this.

Firstly the main protaganist is Abbey. She's 16 years old, very insecure. Her Mum died in a car accident 6 years ago and Abbey's still obsessing over it. To the point of making it a boring read that you have to flip pages and pages of analysing each scenario just so the story picks up a little bit. The over-analysing carries on throughout the book, especially near the end, literally dragging out the story for an unnecessary 16 pages.

Her obsession is Nate. A boy clearly older and more mature than her. Oh yeah, and he doesn't really know that she even exists. HIS obsession is mountain-climbing. In fact, thats really all we know about him.

When the story takes us to the climbing part, I think my brain went a little numb. I found it incredibly dull. But if you like climbing then, hey, this book is for you!

We have lots of different POV's throughout, all 3rd person except for Abbey. I had a feeling that this was why the book didn't really gel well mostly because instead of being a little more creative the author chose just to switch characters. For me it lost the flow of the story and depth of the key people.

Plus there was the awful: one minute later....one hour later...several minutes later...headers which really were annoying and not necessary. Again creative writing could have included this. It just gave a feeling of laziness.

Now for the hard part. This whole book is about Death. And yes, there's lots of depressing talk about it all the way through the book. Which kind of makes the whole thing extremely depressing. I can't say that this book was enjoyable at any one time. It really didn't even have any romantic tender moments. Even when Nate/Death kissed Abbey it just felt a little too creepy.

Overall, I'm sorry to say that this book really didn't do anything for me. I read the book description and thought the story might lead somewhere else but sadly it didn't.

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