*Review--E-ARC Unearthly by Cynthia Hand*

In the beginning, there's a boy standing in the trees...

Clara Gardner has recently learned that she's part angel. Having angel blood run through her veins not only makes her smarter, stronger, and faster than humans (a word, she realizes, that no longer applies to her), but it means she has a purpose, something she was put on this earth to do. Figuring out what it is, though, isn't easy.

Her visions of a raging forest fire and an alluring stranger lead her to a new school in a new town. When she meets Christian, who turns out to be the boy of her dreams (literally), everything seems to fall into place--and out of place, at the same time. Because there's another guy, Tucker, who appeals to Clara's less angelic side.

As Clara tries to find her way in a world she no longer understands, she encounters unseen dangers and choices she never thought she'd have to make--between honesty and deciet, love and duty, good and evil. When the fire from her vision finally ignites, will Clara be ready to face her destiny?

I received this e-ARC of Unearthly by Cynthia Hand courtesy of NetGalley.

I'm new to the angel of urban fantasy, particularly with YA as well. Slowly dipping into it. I read Angelfire, which my review for that will be up in February. And I received Hush Hush for Christmas (I assume since I write this early, it may have been my birthday) and now I've read Unearthly.

I'll admit it took me awhile to get into it. I don't know why. Maybe because it was YA and a little too high school-ish at times? I had to remind myself that it was YA and was for high school students, but I did enjoy some of it. There are two guys Clara deals with one, being Christian, the boy she dreams about saving, and the other is Tucker, the guy who annoys the heck out of her. His behavior reminded me something of the guys I went to school with, although there were definite differences between them, Tucker for one was not a complete a-hole!

Clara was an interesting character, I liked that she had a mind of her own and yet still wanted to be dutiful and respect her angel duties. She has but one purpose on this earth as we learn and she learns it rather early, the purpose comes at any time during an angel's life.

Hand does explain some of the angel thing in general so that's it's rather understandable. The only thing that confused me was how her mother didn't age, she's part angel too--not much of a spoiler because Clara tells us this moments after tell us she's an angel--her mom has been around longer than Clara thought, we learn how long a little ways into the book, but I just didn't quite understand her slow aging bit, it wasn't explained real well to stick with me if it was explained at all.

But overall the book was pretty decent. It was paced pretty good, there were some slow times when I felt like I wasn't really reading a book with something supernatural or "unearthly" in it. Where it became a book with normal people doing normal things, that was when it became hard to continue reading.

There are also "bad angels" in the book as well, Clara learns many things about her angel life that she didn't know before because her mother didn't tell her. Which makes Clara wonder what else her mother is keeping from her.

There is sort of a love triangle going on, or the start of one really. It's hard to explain without giving something away, but it was done really well I think. And there was a HUGE twist at the end, but I kind of, sort of, started to wonder at it and was thinking something was up, but I still never had a clear idea as to what the HUGE event was. But I knew something was up!

Overall it was a decent read, although I did struggle with it here and there. Clara was a good MC, I liked her independence and willingness to rebel and be daring. I won't say the causes of course, but she had a good balance to her. She did what was right and what she believed was right in her heart, and there were some conflictions sometimes, where she didn't know what to do. She was a very real character, except for the angel bit!

I give it 3.5/5 stars, really really close to 4 though, there was just the bits here and there that lost my interest. But the book was a decent read, really good in fact. When the second book comes out, which there has to be with the sort of cliffhanger that we had at the end, I will likely read it as well!

This title will release January 4, 2011