Broken Wings by Melanie Nilles
Raea is your typical high school student that soon finds out that she is not who she thought she was. This is a wonderful coming-of-age story with a masterful twist on the idea. The twist... well one morning Raea finds out that she had grown wings over night! At first she tries to hide it from everyone, until she realizes that she's gonna have to trust her aunt with it. Turns out she already knew and so does the crazy introverted boy who lives next to them, except he's no ordinary human. He comes from the same planet as Raea. To top things off, Raea has to contend with the starfire entities who live in the necklace that Raea wears. The starfire entities grant her perfect memory, and share with her their collective memory, which serves to give her needed information at critical times in the story. In return Raea is their keeper and charged to keep them save and out of the hands of the bad guys. Enter Palin, who is a handsome popular foreign exchange student boy that all the girls love. Palin takes a liking to Raea, and well let's just say that he's not the best thing that's ever happened to her.
The story line overall was refreshing and the ideas were knew and interesting. The story moved along at a good pace, with good cliff hangers at vital points in the story. My favorite character was actually Josh, who is Raea's best friend. He is a trustworthy character, and oh so gullible, in essence the comic relief to all the seriousness that Raea is going through. If it wasn't for Josh, I would probably not have finished the story. I like to laugh every now and then when reading a good book. The book was easy to read and definitely age appropriate for tweens and teens. If you enjoy fantasy with romance thrown in to the twist of things, you'll enjoy this book. Otherwise, you should look elsewhere.
