from Zodiac Book Reviews
There are many books out there with battles between angels and demons, good and evil; but She Speaks to Angels has elements I've never read in another book of its kind. Ami Blackwelder takes real life issues ans combines them with the supernatural to create a tale of gripping survival, intense romance, and puzzling mystery.
Ali's world changed abruptly when Tommy Bachelor jumped from the roof of her high school. But why would a popular football player kill himself? Ali believes that there's more to the incident than meets the eye and starts her own investigation into the suicide. What she finds is unbelievable. Angels in Manhattan? Yep, but they aren't the only ones taking up residence in the city. The demons, or Dark Angels, are also in town, and they want Ali dead. Why do they want her dead? Because she found out their secret and they are losing their power and the only way to get it back is by killing her. But the angels, or AngelFire, will do anything to protect her.
Ali doesn't know who she can trust. Dameon, the guy she's been crushing on since he transferred the Millennium High and is finally showing interest in her? Or the three new transfer students--Kian, Krysta, and Nathaniel--who warn Ali away from Dameon? What she does know is that none of them are what they seem and all of them are hiding something.
One of the unique things I really liked about She Speaks to Angels is the rules that the angels and demons are to live by. The AngelFire are pretty serious about keeping them, but the Dark Angels gain new, not necessarily stronger, powers by breaking them; such as fur or fangs. Breaking the rules results in loss of essence, loss of wings, and loss of gifts. One of the rules that Kian and Ali have grievance with is the one that states that there can be no intimacy with humans, otherwise there's a loss of wing power. This makes for some pretty intense moments between Ali and Kian when they do allow some small amount of physical contact.
I like that Ali didn't fall in love with Kian right away. She was so blinded by Dameon in the beginning that she never really saw Kian until it was almost too late. When she did finally see Kian, she realized her mistake in choosing Dameon over Kian. The fact that there can be little to no physical intimacy between them proves that their feelings are from the heart and not hormones. Because of the no intimacy rule, their relationship has an intensity that's purely emotional. I thought that the moments when Kian touches Ali with his ethereal form was very powerful, because it's the only way for them to really be able to touch without Kian losing his wing power.
The beginnings of Dameon and Sammael's plan for making an army of Fanged and Were demons to fight the AngelFire are revealed in She Speaks to Angels. With losses and gains at the end of this book, it will be interesting to see how these changes impact future events.