Embrace

Embrace
By Jessica Shirvington
Sourcebooks Fire, 2012. 374 pgs. Teen fiction (I read the ARC)

Violet Eden has long loved her friend Lincoln, but he sees her as a training partner for martial arts and running. Just as Violet is about to see if they can take things to the next level, he betrays her. Lincoln has known all along that Violet, on her seventeenth birthday, will find out that she, like him, is a Grigori, a half-angel, half-human charged with protecting humans from fallen angels. Violet just wants to have a normal life and she's not so sure she wants to embrace this new life--and she is sure that she no longer wants nothing to do with Lincoln. She starts spending a lot of time with Phoenix, a fallen angel, who, technically she should want nothing to do with but who draws her in so much that she can't stay away. However, even as romance is developing with Phoenix, she can't forget Lincoln--and she also can't quite walk away from the fact that the Grigori need her help as fallen angels are wreaking havoc on her town.

I think teen readers will love this one--it's got passion, it's got a love triangle, it's got all that paranormal goodness (for those who like that sort of thing). As an adult reader, I struggle a bit with the physical relationship between Violet and Phoenix. To explain why, I've got to give some SPOILERS!
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Okay, aside from the fact that I think there' s too much sex in teen books anyway (yes, I admit my personal bias), Phoenix is a fallen angel who manipulates Violet's emotions, making her like him more and Lincoln less. I would think that when a girl finds out the guy she slept with has manipulated her like that, particularly a girl who was sexually assaulted by a teacher in her past, that she would have some sort of anger/depression/extreme reaction...and she doesn't really. I don't really buy that. I don't know if it's because we as readers are supposed to think of Phoenix as the dreamy bad boy or what, but bad boys who cross into manipulation in order to further a physical relationship are NOT dreamy. And as an adult, I worry that maybe teens won't make that connection and realize how wrong it was for Phoenix to mess with Violet like that.
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End spoilers.

Overall, I can see it being popular with a lot of teens, and they'll be clamoring for the next book in the series.

3 stars. Has a sex scene (not detailed) as well as a brief discussion of how one character had envisioned his romantic seduction of another character. Some language as well.