Title: Hidden Wings (Hidden Wings #1)

Author: Cameo Renae

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Published: January 18, 2013

I was given this book by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

After being in a car accident which killed her parents Emma was taken to Alaska to live with an aunt she had never heard of. There she learned she was in danger.

This is one of those books where if you read the description you have essentially read the entire book. You really don't get any more information out of the story other than the names of characters.

The first two and a half chapters were devoted to Emma's best friends. Then we didn't see them for the rest of the book. They did get mentioned briefly near the end. Other than an example of everything she was leaving behind by moving to Alaska I really didn't understand why they were in the story at all.

There were some things that seem almost reasonable on the surface, but then just seemed weird. Emma's social worker was the person who told her about the accident, her parent's death, and where she was going to be living. Then she left and we never saw her again. Emma wasn't allowed to go home and pack for her trip, pick up mementos of her parents or knickknacks she felt sentimental about. Not only was this not a problem for her she didn't even bring up the concept. No, her two friends went in to her house and packed two bags of her warmest clothing. They also packed the two presents they gave her for her birthday and a picture of her parents. That was it. There was no talk of packing up the rest of the house. Is it just going to sit there with all her families belongings indefinitely?

I had a problem with the cold. She talks about it being winter. Emma lived in California. Her wardrobe would have reflected a warm climate. Her best friends packed all her heaviest clothing. Emma mentions a couple of sweatshirts, which would go really far. Then half the book is outside, in Alaska, and she has sneakers on. For a couple of pages she had a coat. At the end of the book the cold became a problem for her. I thought FINALLY and how I found it really realistic and reasonable.

At one point I was wondering if this was supposed to be a 200 page Kindle ad. It felt like the author was trying to see how many times she could mention Kindle within the assigned pages without making it obvious the same information could be had from a thirty second commercial.

Emma had little depth as a character. She was a teenager, her parents just died, she was leaving her friends and home. Every once in awhile she would get sad and cry. That was it. There was no real grieving. There was no denial or other stages of grief. Emma did not remember the accident, she didn't see her parent's bodies, and there was no funeral. There was no sense of closure, but her crying every couple of hours for a few minutes really represented the mourning she should have been going through. To offset the trauma there was a cute guy who she was of course destined to be with. I guess that would have completely eclipsed any other emotional aspect of what she would have been going through.

The ending was a little annoying. I am okay with have sequels. In fact I am good with series of books. If I am going to read a second in a series I want it to be because of the characters or because I want to know that is going to happen next within the story. I do not want it to be because book one ended in the middle of a scene. I feel like I didn't actually finished the book even though I ran out of pages.

Overall I gave this book 1 star out of 5.