Review - No One's Angel - By: Kelly Walker

Title: No One's Angel
Author: Kelly Walker
Publisher: All Night Reads
Release Date: September 6th, 2013
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Synopsis via Goodreads

Tess used to spend more hours than she’d care to admit playing her favorite computer game, using the nickname Angel. She could pretend her life was different, and she could pretend Arion was just a friend. But a girl needs more to keep her warm at night than pixels and she traded her virtual heaven for a real life hell. Now she’s on the run from a past she won’t talk about, and the only place she has to go is the doorstep of the friend she’s never actually met.

When Angel disappeared from their nightly games, it nearly destroyed Arion. He threw himself into work and women, but he can’t help knowing the one night stands will never compare to the angel who haunts his dreams. At first, when she shows up soaking wet and scared-shitless on his doorstep, he thinks his prayers have been answered.

But the more Arion tries to keep Angel close, the more her fear drives her away. If they are ever going to have a chance for a future, they’ll first have to deal with the past that hasn’t forgotten her any more than she’s forgotten it, and Arion will have to learn how to let her go.

My rating:

Damn. Fooled by the synopsis again. Be careful, guys. It sounds way better than it actually is. When I requested it, I thought I’d be getting an exciting, original story with complex characters and a heart-swelling romance.

Exciting, it ain’t. Original? Not quite.

Wanna know what sucks the most? I thought it was going to be a 5 star-er. It started off so strong. Kelly Walker pulled me into the story from page one with her fluid, angsty pace. The first chapter opens with Angel (Tess) in the rain, broke and shivering, and looking for a specific place. When she gets there, we learn it was not the place exactly that she was searching for, but a guy named Arion. A guy she’d never met, but had forged an online connection with in a game.

So, yeah, it seemed like it’d be all kinds of unique. Except it fell flat. Really, really flat. The uniqueness wore off in about four chapters when all Angel and Arion did was lay around his home and sleep and have a bunch of meaningless conversation. I kept waiting for something to happen, something to spice up the monotony.

I waited a long time.

I think there was supposed to be a plot, but I didn’t find one. Seriously. This book flipflopped between Arion and Angel doing absolutely nothing with their lives, him trying to get her to open up about why she sought him out in the first damn place, and Angel trying to figure that out for herself.

Angel had been in an emotionally and physically abusive relationship with her boyfriend, Nick. When she decided she’d had enough, she ran to Arion. (It’s not a spoiler; you figure it out pretty quickly.) From Arion’s preconceptions of her, she was supposed to be this feisty, sarcastic, smart girl. I didn’t see that at all. I mean, I get it. She was vulnerable and trying to put herself together after being in such an abusive environment, so I didn’t expect for her to be those things for a while. The thing was…they never showed up. And all the while Arion was thinking ‘Gosh, she’s so strong and beautiful and stunning and awesome and spunky and blah blah blah.’ I got HOW they fell in love. I just couldn’t understand WHY. Maybe I just didn’t see it, but the only character traits I got from her were annoying, indecisive, and unnecessarily stubborn the few times that she stood up for herself.

As for Arion…he was mediocre. That’s all that comes to mind when I think of him. He had a bit more substance than Angel, but not much. The occasional funny line thrown here and there. A few times, he showed traits of being this sexy, charming guy. But the way his internal monologues went on and on and on about how Angel had wrecked him on the inside made him seem less like a tortured hero and more like a desperate, weak man with controlling impulses. For example, when he destroyed his house in a tantrum because he thought (with no proof) that Angel had left after the first night of him ever seeing her in real life. He could’ve handled that so much better. By, say, actually searching for her instead of being immature. Seriously, she ended up being in the next room. You can’t justify that.

Their romance was dead to me. It lacked everything. Trust. Steam. Emotion. Angel was much too concerned with getting away from Arion and then wanting to jump his bones and then running scared again for me to even consider it love. And Arion was too hung up on his mommy issues to ever let Angel be independent like she needed to be in the aftermath of her abusive relationship.

The side characters were actually, surprisingly, well done. There was Chelsea, Arion’s step-sister and Lexi, a girl who worked with his family that stood out the most. Their portrayals actually did ambitious, intelligent women justice. Chelsea came off as this stupid blond bimbo initially, but then we realize that that’s not entirely true. And Lexi was this bright, horse-loving girl with a dream to study Equine Science. They were both equally supportive of each other and Angel. There was none of that petty drama and slut-bashing that you see so prominently nowadays.

The end was unbelievably predictable and awfully anticlimactic, much like the entire book. The bad guy went down, and Arion and Angel lived happily ever after. Congrats to them, but I just could not muster a single crap to give at their HEA.

Why did I give it two stars instead of one, then? Simple. It made me cry.

Angel’s recounts of Nick’s abuse brought tears to my eyes like nothing else. Each snippet was heartbreaking:

“Nick took my innocence, and my hopes for the future, and my chance at college and everything I’d wanted for myself the first time he held me down and told me I could either agree to let him fuck me, or he’d dope me with ecstasy until I did.” 

__________________***___________________

“My fingers absentmindedly trace the scar behind my elbow, one of the few outward ones I have. Most of the time, Nick was careful not to leave visible evidence; he liked to believe people were fooled into thinking he was a good, upstanding guy and a bruised-up girlfriend might complicate that. Maybe they were fooled. I sure was. I don’t remember what I said that made him send me crashing through the glass coffee table, but I’ll never forget the bite of glass as it seared my flesh.”

__________________***___________________

“Last night, I dreamed Nick killed my mom. I found her lying on the cold tile floor of her kitchen, the words ‘come back’ pained into the pool of her blood beside her.”

The bottom line is, while I didn’t like the characters or the plot, the meaning stuck with me. It touched upon some very serious topics, and didn’t make light of them by overshadowing/ignoring the issues with the romance. I can respect that.

“I know I’m no one’s angel, because if I had wings I’d fly away, and I wouldn’t stop until I eventually soared above the pain.”

**ARC received via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**