Books by and for independent women

Ordinary Angels by India Drummond

Ordinary Angels is the début novel by American novelist India Drummond and boy, what a début.

At first glance, you could be forgiven for thinking this is little more than a byproduct of the Twilight craze – there’s the slightly odd loner heroine, the impossibly handsome, otherworldly love interest, and a secret. But thankfully that is where the comparisons end.

For one, the slightly odd heroine, Zoe Pendergraft, isn’t a sulky emo teen. Rather, she is a young woman living in San Francisco with what can be best described as a sixth sense.

And the love interest, Alexander, isn’t a brooding vampire but an interfering angel who has a penchant for humans. As for the secret, well, Zoe tends to favour friends of a more ghostly nature than most twenty-somethings.

It is when one of her ghost friends is accused of murder that Zoe is sent into a complete spin and embarks on a mission to clear his name. Along the way, she meets a couple of demons, a necromancer and a few more angels, one of whom is (rather incongruously) a lawyer. She also manages to make time to fall deeper in lust with Alexander and engage in some *ahem* passionate pauses.

The sex scenes in the book leave very little to the imagination and would not be out of place in Embrace Books’ Red Velvet series. Although you can see Drummond’s imagination running riot in a fairyland of outdoor bedrooms and crystal clear, secluded forest pools, she manages to keep it in the realm of relatable fantasy.

This is probably the closest a reader will come to being undressed by a six-foot tall, chiselled seraph. You can’t help but wonder though – if your best friend had disappeared after being accused of murder, surely you wouldn’t have time for a lustful encounter or five with your brand new maybe-boyfriend?

The murder storyline is gripping, shifting effortlessly between the human and angel realm. The story does sometimes threaten to be too complicated, however.

There are a lot of characters, both human and otherwise, to keep track of and just when you think you’ve got a grip on who’s who and what’s going on, Zoe and Alexander’s clothes disappear.

Regardless, it was nigh on impossible to put down and provided a good distraction from the stresses and strains of city life. The language is fun, easy to follow and so descriptive that it wouldn’t take much to turn it into a screen play. The movie would probably have an age restriction, though!

Drummond obviously has a talent for bringing fantasy into everyday life and if she can keep the stories simple, she will be an author to watch for the future.

Ordinary Angels is out next week, and you can keep track of its publication on Goodreads.

Rating: 3.5/5

Recommended for: Anyone who wants to be able to read their erotica in public (the cover doesn’t give anything away!) or has outgrown the Twilight series.

Other recommended reading: For blurring the line between the normal and the paranormal, try Superstition by David Ambrose. If you like the thought of graphic love scenes interspersed with your thriller, try Sally Clements’ Bound to Love.

Boomskilpaadjie