Wings of the Wicked by Courtney Allison Moulton

Wings of the Wicked by Courtney Allison Moulton
Angelfire #2
Release Date: January 31, 2012
Publisher: HarperCollins
Rating: Enjoyable

Life as the Preliator is harder than Ellie ever imagined.
Balancing real life with the responsibility of being Heaven’s warrior is a challenge for Ellie. Her relationship with Will has become all business, though they both long for each other. And now that the secret of who she really is has come out, so have Hell’s strongest reapers. Grown bold and more vicious, the demonic threaten her in the light of day and stalk her in the night.

She’s been warned.
Cadan, a demonic reaper, comes to her with information about Bastian’s new plan to destroy Ellie’s soul and use an ancient relic to wake all the souls of the damned and unleash them upon humanity. As she fights to stay ahead of Bastian’s schemes , the revelations about those closest to her awaken a dark power within Ellie that threatens to destroy everything—including herself.

She’ll be betrayed.
Treachery comes even from those whom she loves, and Ellie is broken by the deaths of those who stood beside her in this Heavenly war. Still, she must find a way to save the world, herself, and her love for Will. If she fails, there will be hell to pay. - Goodreads

Was anyone else really looking forward to this book after reading Angelfire? I definitely was. I LOVED the first book in this trilogy and have been waiting for a whole year for WotW to come out. Unfortunately, I didn't end up enjoying it as much as I had hoped.

The story picks up just after Angelfire ends - I think a couple of weeks have passed - and it throws us straight into a fight scene. These action scenes were some of my favourite parts of the book (when I wasn't getting frustrated with Ellie, but I'll talk about that later) and I they were really well written for the most part.

The book was fast paced to begin with and kept this up until it suddenly slumped in the middle. I feel as though the plot could have been tightened a bit more to make the book flow better. The beginning of the end (XD) was full of action, but then it died down until the very end. It ended on a cliffhanger, and while I have a pretty good idea of how this is going to turn out, it's enough to keep me reading despite the problems I had with this book.

I think that this book focused too much on the romance. The book is over 500 pages long, and I feel it could have been condensed if there was more focus on the actual story and the characters rather than having Ellie whine about Will.

I have to say, though, that the scenes between Ellie and Will were VERY steamy! Courtney Allison Moulton has SKILLS.

Now I'm going to rant about Ellie. Be warned.

She was SO bloody ANNOYING. First of all, she whined about everything. I understand that she may be having a tough time balancing her normal life with her angel stuff but really, this was ridiculous. She bitched about Will when he saved her from getting raped at a party. Ugh.

Secondly, Ellie is meant to be this badass angel warrior, yet it was the others (Will and the others) that ended up protecting her in almost every single fight scene.  Ellie just stood there like a plank of wood, watching while people died for her. I can't deal with this. Fair enough if she TRIED to help, but instead she just observed, as if she was too worried about breaking a damn nail. She was so useless, why didn't she fight?!?!

And last but not least, she's a hypocrite. She got upset about Will keeping secrets from her, and yet she decides to keep MAJOR secrets from Will. Even worse, she has told these secrets to practically everyone BUT Will. Talk about not being able to keep your mouth shut.

As for Will, I LOVED HIM. He is so adorable <3 He doesn't deserve to be stuck loving someone like Ellie for centuries. I hope he can move on, but I doubt that will happen.

Cadan was a character we met in Angelfire, and I was really looking forward to seeing more of him in this book. I loved him in Angelfire and he had great potential to become one of those snarky yet lovable antagonist/slash/love interests that I love. But nope, that was all ruined. I hate what Moulton did with his character, and I am really upset because of the potential I feel was lost. This is a slight spoiler, so move on to the next paragraph if you want to remain completely spoiler free. Apparently Cadan has fallen in love with Ellie ALREADY. They've only seen each other, at most, six times since the incident on the boat, and these scenes were terribly short. And yet he's going around telling her he's in love with her and will do anything for her. Why does his character have to be ruined by insta-love? This may be down to Ellie's abilities - or something, I didn't really pay attention because she said something about everyone being made to love her OF COURSE - but nonetheless, it completely ruined his character for me.

Overall I enjoyed Wings of the Wicked for Will and the fast paced plot, but Ellie has become one of the most useless protagonists I have ever read about. And Cadan was a huge disappointment. I'll be reading the next book for Will and Will alone.