Keeping It Real

Angels Unlimited #9

by Annie Dalton

Mel is thrilled to be sent on an urgent angelic mission back to her old school. She always jokes about her old school being a hellhole, but when she arrives she's shocked to find that this is literally the case! Graffiti, disobedience, bad behavior, and terrible grades aside, this school has problems. Invisible beasts from hell roam the corridors, and the students have completely lost sight of their dreams. When she finally sees her three best friends, she's horrified to see how much they've changed. One has almost totally gone over to the Dark Powers, and worse still, this whole nightmare might be all Mel's fault!

Genres: Fantasy, Childrens, Angels, Young Adult, Middle Grade, Fiction, Paranormal

208 pages, Paperback

First published September 23, 2005

About the author

Annie grew up as an only child in the English countryside during the 1950s. Her father was not always around but when he was, he would tell her fantastical stories, often with her as the principal character. Annie missed him and his stories, which led her to the fantasy section at her local library, thus sparking life-long love of fiction.

After undertaking jobs such as waitressing, cleaning and factory work, Annie went on to study at University of Warwick and soon started writing.

Annie lives in Norfolk. She has three children, Anna, Reuben, and Maria (the inspiration for the first “Angels Unlimited” book, “Winging It”) and two grandchildren, Sophie and Isabella.

Reviews

[Kiki_chieuse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dans ce tome, comme l'indique le titre, Mel retourne sur Terre. Si elle n'a pas le droit de se matérialiser, les moments où elle découvre ce que sont devenues ses amies sont assez émouvants. Cela oblige à prendre conscience de ce qu'un décès laisse derrière lui. Comme toujours, le sujet est amené avec le caractère pétillant de la jeune fille.

J'ai également apprécié que, si la mission n'est pas un succès total, le récit termine sur quelque chose de très touchant, de fort et de si positif. Bon, j'avoue que j'ai été perturbée de ne pas avoir l'habituel retour au paradis post-mission mais la conclusion en vaut le coup.

Encore une fois, une histoire aux notes pédagogiques mêlant naïveté adolescente et optimisme. Je pense qu'il est facile de s'identifier à tel ou tel personnage et ainsi se sentir concerné par la mission, intégré à l'équipe. Une lecture qui m'a reboostée.

[Emi · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I'm feeling some sweet energy in the house tonight, you Park Hall people must have serious auras. Yeah man, there's enough lies and illusion in this world, but you guys are still keeping it real."

I decided to take a break from my reading challenge to continue and revisit a series I read in my childhood. In this one, Mel is sent back to her own time to help her friends, and discovers a myriad of problems that has her death at the centre of it all. She manages to solve it with help from fellow angel agents, but not without some difficulty. I won't go into further detail on that because I honestly can't be bothered.

Dalton's continued style of first-person storytelling is still grating at times, sometimes it's difficult to properly discern what's happening due to the style of which she has Mel retell it in—sometimes having Mel straight up tell us 'what I said was for our ears only', which comes across as a lazy cop-out to me. It's happened in previous volumes of this series, and in this one it happened on page 201: 'Most of what I said was for Shay's ears only.' Another moment that I think is a good example of a moment that's written in a way that creates difficulty to picture the moment in my mind is when Mel gets her 'angel upgrade' on page 24. She's upset that nobody showed up to her birthday party, when this happens:

The night was suddenly full of whizzy little rainbows: zoom, zoom, zoom. ... Then all these colours started to swirl into awesome cosmic-type patterns.

It's not a terrible description, but what does awesome cosmic-type patterns look like? This does feel a bit nitpicky, and once again I do understand that I'm not the target audience, but I recall sometimes being a bit frustrated with the first-person language when I read this as a kid as well. I'm never getting over Mel calling stuff 'groovy' as well, this came out when my generation were kids (90s to early 2000s) and I would assume it's attempting to appeal to kids, we were all saying 'wicked' back then—one of Dalton's beta readers or editors should have told her!

I will say, the description provided of Mel's high school brings back vivid memories of my own secondary school, which is the total opposite of me struggling to picture whizzy little rainbows. Even down to there being an overpass bridge over a large main road connecting two sides of the school ground (only, the one at my school connected the fields for P.E. with the rest of the building, the science, tech, and IT 'annexe'—which my school also had—was on the same side of the road as the rest of the school, I still remember having to brave the outside chill during winter months for my science, tech, and IT lessons and having slush from salt being put down filling my school shoes and freezing my feet). If my secondary school happened to show up in a book as the setting of a hell portal or something, I wouldn't personally be surprised.

As a children's series, I sometimes forget about the heavy topics Dalton introduces in these books. Usually, the topics are historical (such as the slave trade in previous volumes), but in this one it was more contemporary due to this book's setting. It mostly deals with grieving and, for one character in particular, suicide ideation. As someone who has a history of having these feelings, this quote hit me surprisingly close to home: "Was that what I'd seen? A haunted soul too ashamed to live and too scared to die?" I do personally think Dalton has approached each of these heavy topics, in this book and previous volumes, with a respect, delicacy, and tact, but that's just my opinion. When I read that, I didn't feel ashamed that I once felt the same way and could relate to it, I felt seen, understood, and slightly less alone.

[Vikaziza · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn't a bad story. It was dramatic, it was nice to see Mel's friends and family (i've never even heard her friends' names before) and i liked that part with Shay. But i didn't like the story as much as the ones before. I quess it is because this was the first Angel Unlimited book i've read in English (up to this book i read it translated) so it sounded little different. I was little confused with the abbreviations. But i liked to see how Mel is learning what it means to be an angel agent.

[Rebecca Andersen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dette er bog 9 i serien Agent Engel. I denne bog så ender Mel med at komme ned i hendes gamle kvater i hendes egen tidslinje.

Denne bog er hurtigt at læse og det er en hyggelig serie. Den er skrevet til unge teenager og det kan man godt se i måden bogen er skrevet på. Det mener dog ikke at bogen ikke er skrevet godt, den er bare skrevet på en anden måde.

Hvis man kan lide bøger som er for alderen 11-17 som er nemme at læse og hurtige at læse så kan denne bog være noget for dig

[Emilia · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting book where Mel's past and present come to a crashing head. It's interesting to see how Mel struggles to see the past for what it is, and to appreciate it's reality while letting go of the childhood fantasy - an experience a lot of children go through. It's also good to see what Brice can get up to, the kind of humans he can look after, the kind of angel he will be.

[Becca · Rating 4 out of 5]

lovely

[JWinter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Loved this when I was younger, definitely on the younger side of YA. A sweet and quick read.

[Mariam Abood · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book on impulse as a little kid after I found it in the bargain bin at Woolworths. As a naïve eight year old I was kind of expecting a lovely fairy glittery story since I saw a pink book, with a girl with wings on the front cover. Instead I read a dark children's book that romanticised the idea of dying and the after life.

It's not the darkest book I've ever read but for an eight year old it was up there. This book follows the story of a girl who becomes an angel after she dies, but decides she wants to visit her family, despite being dead. Even though she was visiting them as an angel, and not a ghost, it felt a bit like a ghost story because she was visiting her past life but her family didn't know she was watching over them. I found this book quite dark because while she visits her family as an angel she watches them still grieve over her death. It's really not that bad for an adult, but it was bad for a little kid.

There were cute scenes though, good for the target market but still creepy.

[Sally · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this one much more than the last! Mel is sent back to her old school and gets to see how her three best friends have changed in the year since she died. It's a very gritty place, the characters are not that likeable, and they also act a lot older than 13 at times. I liked that much more than if they'd all been total Mary Sues in a place that's all sunshine and roses! But no, they go to a crummy school in a shitty area and do some very dodgy things. It'd be more believable if they were four or five years older, but age isn't mentioned much so it's easy to just pretend.

[beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. It's definitely one of my favs, though I'm not sure if it actually overtakes Fighting Fit. They're probably joint first.

This book was so good. I couldn't put it down. Really. I actually could not bring myself to put the bookmark inside the book. I'm a bit confused as to what happened to Sky in the end though. But Brice was so sweet in this book <3

Now I've gotta read Going for Gold!

[Ceasars · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the first books I read in english. It was hard. And it was only one year ago I read it. And look to what I'm reading now!!! I actually improved in reading.

[Adrienn Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book is really good and its easy to read! I read it in 8 days by reading 20 minutes a day ;)

[Christine Vergara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome!