Review--Black Bird of the Gallows by Meg Kassel

A simple but forgotten truth: Where harbingers of death appear, the morgues will soon be full.

Angie Dovage can tell there’s more to Reece Fernandez than just the tall, brooding athlete who has her classmates swooning, but she can’t imagine his presence signals a tragedy that will devastate her small town. When something supernatural tries to attack her, Angie is thrown into a battle between good and evil she never saw coming. Right in the center of it is Reece—and he’s not human.

What’s more, she knows something most don’t. That the secrets her town holds could kill them all. But that’s only half as dangerous as falling in love with a harbinger of death.

Meg Kassel’s Black Bird of the Gallows was one of the most unique books I’ve read in a while! I mean, I never read a book that was about harbringers before. I found it to be very interesting and it had a colorful mythology! The characters were pretty good too! They were ones that had flaws and room for growth, they were very real…even the ones that turned into crows!

Angie isn’t quite your average teenager; she had a rough go of life at an early age when she and her mom were practically homeless and were living in their car. Her mother had a drug problem that eventually led to her overdose and death. Since then Angie has lived with her father that she never really knew growing up. She’s also secretly a popular DJ at a local night club, though at school she’s still more shy and secretive about herself and past. Then one day new neighbors move in next door and with them is Reece who’s her age and basically the ultimate mystery boy wrapped up in a package and Angie is determined to figure out what his deal is. Sound familiar?

Though the story sounds familiar, that’s really the only similarity it has. Reece, as the description will tell you, is a harbringer. He and his family are drawn to areas that are about to experience something catastrophic that will involve death. Feeding on death helps to give them life. It’s a complicated situation to explain, but Reece does eventually give Angie the lowdown on what he and his family are. Though his family wasn’t in the picture as much as I would’ve thought.

There’s a reason why Reece and his family came to Angie’s town though, and that’s because someone else already beat them there and that is the Beekeeper. He’s a different kind of paranormal and one that’s basically the cause for all the chaos and insanity that starts to infect Angie’s town. The Beekeeper has his own plans that very much involve Reece and Angie and he will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

This was a pretty good read that I really enjoyed! It wasn’t perfect, but it was fairly close! Some of the issues I had were with the pacing. I felt like there was too much time spent trying to figure out what Reece was even though we already knew his identity based on the cover description, though not in a lot of detail of course. But once that part was taken care of, things did prove to get more interesting as we focused our attention on the enemy at hand.

The Beekeeper was quite the menace, though he was mostly in and out of the story and causing chaos rather than being fully present. He seemed sinister too with all the lurking! The last one hundred pages of this book was where the real creepy stuff started happening in the town. It was basically like Armageddon! Though more focused on bringing an end to the town itself than the world, at least at this point!

The romance aspect of the book was rather sweet too. Though it did sort of fall under insta-love in some respects, I did like that it still took sometime before a relationship was fully formed between Angie and Reece! Then of course once they were together more problems and chaos ensued, so there was very little time for kissing sadly!

The ending was pretty surprising too! I know there’s a sequel but I kept myself blind to what that one was about and I seriously thought things were going in an entirely different direction with this one because of it! And whoa. Just whoa! Meg really threw a fast one there and I totally didn’t see this ending coming, though it was definitely one I enjoyed!

All in all, while Black Bird of the Gallows wasn’t what I expected it to be, it was still by far a most unique and intriguing read! I will be eager to see where things go in the next installment!

Overall Rating 4/5 stars