Title: Confessions of a Fallen Angel
Author: Ronan O’Brien
Publisher: Hodder General
Price: $37.99
Imagine you can see into the future.
Only it’s not the good stuff you can see, like the winning lotto numbers or who you will marry.
It’s the bad stuff; the deaths of the ones you love most.
That’s exactly what happens to Charlie in Confessions of a Fallen Angel by Irish author Ronan O’Brien.
As a ten year old, Charlie undergoes a near death experience playing football and wakes up to find he is cursed with the ability to foresee the deaths of those he loves most.
These visions follow him into adulthood and after some disastrous attempts to thwart destiny, Charlie must choose whether or not to save the little girl he cherishes and stop the visions once and for all.
As a debut novel, O’Brien has done a great job and has produced a memorable and very witty character in Charlie with an original and thought provoking story premise.
But sadly the novel loses its way, becoming entirely predictable and worse still, exaggeratedly mushy and phony during the great love story that develops in adult Charlie’s life. While I am all for romance and warm fuzzies, I found myself skim reading to get through the romantic drivel and for the inevitable visions of the death of his beloved to begin and get the novel back on track.
Thankfully it does.
But Confessions of a Fallen Angel it is still well worth a read, with plenty of crackling wit that shows the huge potential Ronan O’Brien has. With a bit of practice and polish, I think his future novels will garner the same enormous popularity as those greats of the comedic/drama genre, Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby.
Only it’s not the good stuff you can see, like the winning lotto numbers or who you will marry.
It’s the bad stuff; the deaths of the ones you love most.
That’s exactly what happens to Charlie in Confessions of a Fallen Angel by Irish author Ronan O’Brien.
As a ten year old, Charlie undergoes a near death experience playing football and wakes up to find he is cursed with the ability to foresee the deaths of those he loves most.
These visions follow him into adulthood and after some disastrous attempts to thwart destiny, Charlie must choose whether or not to save the little girl he cherishes and stop the visions once and for all.
As a debut novel, O’Brien has done a great job and has produced a memorable and very witty character in Charlie with an original and thought provoking story premise.
But sadly the novel loses its way, becoming entirely predictable and worse still, exaggeratedly mushy and phony during the great love story that develops in adult Charlie’s life. While I am all for romance and warm fuzzies, I found myself skim reading to get through the romantic drivel and for the inevitable visions of the death of his beloved to begin and get the novel back on track.
Thankfully it does.
But Confessions of a Fallen Angel it is still well worth a read, with plenty of crackling wit that shows the huge potential Ronan O’Brien has. With a bit of practice and polish, I think his future novels will garner the same enormous popularity as those greats of the comedic/drama genre, Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby.
1 comment:
Hi! Thanks for checking my blog out. And yes, you should move Veronika decides to die up on your list. I loved this book.
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