Review: Meridian (Meridian/Fenestra, #1) by Amber Kizer

Rating (Out of 5): ~3.5

Publisher: Random House (Delacorte Press)

Spoilers: None! (Or, again, very, very minor.)

Goodreads Synopsis:

Half-human, half-angel, Meridian Sozu has a dark responsibility.
Sixteen-year-old Meridian has been surrounded by death ever since she can remember. As a child, insects, mice, and salamanders would burrow into her bedclothes and die. At her elementary school, she was blamed for a classmate’s tragic accident. And on her sixteenth birthday, a car crashes in front of her family home—and Meridian’s body explodes in pain.

Before she can fully recover, Meridian is told that she’s a danger to her family and hustled off to her great-aunt’s house in Revelation, Colorado. It’s there that she learns that she is a Fenestra—the half-angel, half-human link between the living and the dead. But Meridian and her sworn protector and love, Tens, face great danger from the Aternocti, a band of dark forces who capture vulnerable souls on the brink of death and cause chaos.

Review:

I read this a while ago, and I enjoyed it a bit more than I thought I would. It didn't seem like it would be all that different from the other ones like it, but it was.

Meridian finds out that she's a Fenestra (half-human/half-angel), and her parents move her to stay with her Great Aunt, who's also one. She doesn't know what to do about it, and her Great-Aunt helps her accept it and learn how to be one, what she's supposed to do. A Fenestra, for instance, helps people move on after they die, and anyone around her is highly in danger of dying. She doesn't mope about it, or try to deny it much, which was nice. And then some stuff happens in the town that they live in, with some church people. Also, something with her Aunt that's upsetting, but which I won't spoil.

And then there's Tens. He's her sworn protector, and the person she's destined to love. She doesn't know this at first, and he doesn't help for the fact that he's pretty distant and a bit hard edged, but he warms up to her. I actually really liked him, and am interested to see their relationship develop. There's already an obvious attraction, and I like that she doesn't really fight it, just accepts it.

This book introduced us to most things. It explained what she is, what she's fighting against. It introduced us to the characters. And we know that she's supposed to find and help others like her, which is what they're setting off to do at the end of the book. I felt that it was actually done rather well, and I like (or don't mind) the characters that we've met so far, like Meridian and especially Tens. I am interested to read the next one, and the only reason I haven't is probably because it's about double the size of this one (and, you know, I don't have it yet. But that's besides the point).