Angelology by Danielle Trussoni

Images from Chapters.Indigo.caI work for a magazine publishing company. I'm not an editor, but a lot of my friends are and I sometimes get the lucky chance to read a book I'm curious about before it has even come out.

One of these books is Angelology.

I looked it up online because I liked the cover and couldn't tell if it was a book for teens or adults. There was already a wikipedia entry for it talking about a bidding war over the movie rights by some of Hollywood's biggest film companies.

It got me excited. Was I about to get a sneak peak at the next big blockbusting book?

Considering I haven't written this post till now, and I had the book way back in early February I can safely say no, this was not the epic masterpiece I had hoped for.

The novel had a promising start introducing the 19-year-old Angeline who's spent most of her life in a convent and wants nothing more than to continue being a nun. I found this incredibly intriguing, as it's supposed to be modern day and I don't think I've ever heard of a 19-year-old nun!

Angeline works in the convent library and receives a letter asking for access to some archives, archives she begins to wonder herself about.

Meanwhile in the heart of New York, Percival Gregori (isn't that an awesome name for a villain?) is ordering a young graduate student to drive up to the convent and find out more about these mysterious archives. We then follow Percival back to his luxurious Manhattan apartment and find out why he appears to be in so much pain and why he's so urgent to get his hands on these archives.

These are by far the best scenes of the book.

The author tries to create this epic story of otherworldly creatures who live among us (the big trend nowadays--thanks Twilight!), but isn't a strong enough writer yet to handle the number of twists and turns and the depth that a successful story like that requires.

The structure of the book was not well organized and the ending was almost ridiculous. This is not a story that needs multiple books to be told and yet that seems to be exactly what is trying to be done, at the cost of a respectful ending.

Was it worth the read?

No, don't bother! As a movie though, I think the sore points of the book would work well on the big scree, it has potential.