Review: Lacrimosa (Requiem #1) by Christine Fonseca

Lacrimosa by Christine Fonseca
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

WOW!!!! I don't even know where to start. I have been thinking all night and morning about it. I will come back and do a thorough review very soon!
I would like to send my sincere thanks to the author, Christine Fonseca, for allowing me to read and review this book. This review is also posted on the following sites:
http://thecovercontessa.blogspot.com/
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007...
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lacri...
Every once in a while, a book comes along and you are just floored. You are left without words. You're not sure where your emotions are. You have to sit and think, and think and think some more because it's too hard to formulate exactly how it made you feel; you are THAT blown away.
THIS is that book. If I can just say it made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me want to throw things, it made me sigh. The roller coaster of emotions brought on by this book was nothing less than spectacular. I am speechless, which really does not happen to me, and my ability to form a coherent thought about where to even start is really throwing me for a loop!
Nesy is an angle, a Sentinal, a warrior. She is sent to earth to ensure humanity is protected. She is sent to earth to vanquish the UnHoly. She doesn't waiver, she doesn't have emotion. She does her job and then advances to her next assignment. But, when she is sent to vanquish Ayden to the Abyss, all this changes. She is overcome with emotions as she slowly realizes that she and Ayden are connected from a prior lifetime. And with this information in her hands, her job becomes much more complicated than she ever thought possible.
First off, Fonseca is POETIC if nothing else with her descriptive abilities. The language of this book is amazing. The way Fonseca is able to wrap your head around the emotions of the characters is unbelievable. You feel every bit of pain, love, and fear that these characters are experiencing. It hits right at the core of your being, without fail, every single time. And the most amazing thing about it is that it is totally consistent from the beginning of the book through the end. I have not read many books that were able to do this. And the fact that she can do this while the book is being told from two different points of view shows that she truly knows how to write fiction. Usually, I am confused by which character is which in such novels. It takes me quite a few chapters to sort out each character's personality. Not with this book. I knew from the very beginning that Nesy and Ayden are two totally different characters and I was able to keep that separation throughout the book.
The characters are so well thought out. You can see their centuries old, despite the fact that they are teenagers. So, while this book is definitely billed as a Young Adult novel, I would say there is nothing young about it in the least. And this is not a bad observation. On the contrary, this is a tribute to how well Fonseca writes and how well she is able to pull her audience in. This is a tribute to how a book can take you on a ride that you never thought possible, no matter your age. And to watch their growth is amazing. You see each character go through changes that change their point of view. Even the ancillary characters are noted to change, and the focus is not even on them!!!
The book takes many twists and turns. Things you would not see coming. Things you were hoping would not happen but they do because without them happening, there is no story; you would be left with a bland, flat novel that has no substance at all. Fonseca uses that emotional roller coaster to keep you interested. There are also things that you want to happen, and you know they can't, but you are surprised. I love that. You think the characters have no way out of their pain, and Fonseca flips the story so that you cry, or sigh, or scream, or blubber. That is the mark of an excellent book. That is the mark of an author who is so into her writing, she knows exactly where she will take the reader and where she herself wants to go.
In the end, you are left with questions, yes, but you are also forced to rethink love. You question what it is, and whether or not it can stand the test of time, and the test of emotion.
This, my friends is a love story, filled with action. This is a romance which twists and turns and keeps you wanting to come back. I could not put this book down. I read it in one day, with work, and kids activities and everything!
Lacrimosa is by far one of my favorite books of 2012. I highly recommend it. If you put no other new release on your list this year, you must add this book, because I promise, you WILL NOT be disappointed.

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