Review: Black Wings by Christina Henry

Description:
Excorting souls into the afterlife leaves Maddy little time for socializing-until devilishly handsome Gabriel Angeloscurro agrees to rent the empty apartment in her building. But when demons start appearing on Maddy's front lawn, she realizes there's more to her new tenant than meets the eye.

Review:
Finally an urban fantasy novel that is the way I like them. I nearly gave up on them after some disapointments in the last few months but Black Wings reminded  me why I love this genre. It has a great world-building, a funny and witty heroine and a  sidekick made of perfect. And yes, it also has a sexy hero- that was absolutely the icing on the top.

Black Wings is about Madeline "Maddy" Black, an agent of death. Her job is to deliver the souls of the newly deceased to the door that leads to the afterlife. She inherited that job from her mom and to say she's happy would be an overstatement. How satisfying can a job be if it doesn't pay for food or anything at all? She's a loner and not at all as socialized as she wished to be. Her independance isn't her choice but she does what she has to in order to survive. She has a wonderful sense of humor and made me snort more than once.
But with the arrival of Gabriel her whole life is turned upside down. Luckily Maddy is a strong woman and handles all these rather bad news very well. She tries to keep it together and most of the time she does. Although I loved how some things made her lose her temper.

Gabriel is a rather mysterious character at first. Everything about him seems to be a bit "shadowy" and all my inner alarm bells started to scream. Yes it seems that those are my hot guy detectors. While the story progresses we get a better view of him as a person and I have to say I'm in love. His story made my heart bleed and I really would love to see him getting a well deserved HEA. Gabriel develops into Maddy's connection to the new world she's faced with, like a guide who shows her how to act and what to say, or even more important what NOT to say. ;) He really does his best to help her survive it.

And I have to tell you about Beezle, Maddy's gargoyle sidekick and probably her only real friend in this world. He is her roommate but actually more like her supernatural mini-dad. He's a protective little fellow and can really show some mean temper when he thinks that Maddy gets herself in too much trouble. But on the other hand he has a popcorn and chocolate addiction and is really decorative so I totally forgave him everything else. ;)

Black Wings is set in a rather complex world based on Christian mythology. I have to admit all my knowledge about this is taken out of other fiction novels so I'm probably more than under-qualified to judge the correctness. That's why I won't even try to do that. I was very intrigued by everything but at some points I was a bit swamped with information. After 3/4 of the book I even had to ask a friend if I missed something. Perhaps a glossary would have helped keeping track of the mythological and political structure of this world.

I really liked the plot though. It is full of twists and surprising turns and will keep you glued to the pages. It made me nearly break my brain when I tried to figure it out. The story has a great structure and I already know I need to read more.

Black Wings is a wonderful debut novel. It showed me why I love urban fantasy-  wonderful world-building, witty and funny convos and a sexy guy who leads through the story. I can't wait to get my hands on Black Night, book 2 in this series.

To learn more about Christina and her books please visit her website here. 


P.S. I also interviewed Christina at Book Lovers Inc here and there's a giveaway too (US/Can only). 


Read other reviews @Goodreads, buy the book @Book Depository