Falling in love with Autistic sister's Guardian angel | Heavenly

It's just so wild. I've never known anyone who was murdered before. >> [music] >> But then, how could I? Generally, they aren't alive to talk about it. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. So, today we've got Heavenly by Jennifer Lauren. That's Lauren, not Jennifer Lawrence. That's a That's a different person. And I got to say, no one seems to have ever heard of this book series. I have never seen anyone talk about it. I've never seen it brought up. The only reason I know it exists is because I saw an ad on ThriftBooks a while ago. And I thought it looked strange. And the really weird thing is that it seems to have had an audience back when it came out. It has over 2,600 ratings on Goodreads, which is substantially more than average. Like it's not a mind-blowing amount, but it is substantially more than average. The first book has more ratings on Goodreads than Divided We Fall, which I covered a while ago. And there were people in my comment section that had read that book and had heard of it. So, I guess there was an audience for Heavenly. But like I said, the only reason I even know this exists is because I saw an ad for it, and I thought it looked I don't know, it looked fake. Look at the cover. That looks like a shitpost my friends would send me. Like that should be Charlie Kirk's face looking out at the clouds there. And then I read the summary and I found out it's about a teenage girl falling in love with her autistic sister's guardian angel. And that's when I knew, okay, I'm immediately buying all of those. I'm reading all of them, and I'm sharing their contents with the world. I don't care how obscure this crap is. You are going to listen to me ramble about it. But I also think that's probably the best way to experience these books because mostly they're just boring. Like they have a couple of weird and strange and funny bits, which don't worry, I'll cover all of those in this video. But outside of those couple of weird bits, like 80% of the books are just dull. You know, the protagonist goes to a series of parties and she exists as a normal teenager. You know, the the autistic guardian angel plays a much smaller role in the story than you might be led to believe. And a lot of media that is so bad that it's good is like that. You know, you have to have a specific personality to enjoy them. Like if you go on YouTube, there are tons of videos about stuff like The Room, and those videos make fun of The Room and they play all the fun clips from it. >> They betray me. They didn't keep their promise. They treat me and I don't care anymore. I did not hit her. It's not true. It's [ __ ] I did not hit her. I did not. Oh, hi Mark. It's not over. Everybody betrayed me. I fed up with this world. >> And so people sometimes get the impression that the whole movie is like that and then they watch it and they're disappointed. Don't get me wrong, I like that kind of bad media. I I enjoy it. But you have to have a specific personality type to get into it because most of the time it's like 20% fun wacky stuff and the other 80% is just kind of boring and stupid. And the Heavenly Trilogy is no exception to that 80/20 rule. The best way I can think to describe these books is they kind of feel like a Mormon housewife tried to rewrite the O'Neal trilogy. Let me explain. Even after many years, O'Neal is kind of infamous on BookTube. I haven't talked about his trilogy of books all that much, but I did read them and yes, they are terrible. However, to their very little credit, they did try to tackle real-world issues. They failed, but you know, they did try. Stuff like abortion, sexual abuse, school shootings, and bullying, those all come up in the books. They're not handled well, they're not handled maturely, but they tried, and Heavenly also covers difficult topics like that. But, while Onision's books failed because they were written by a narcissistic edgelord who doesn't actually care about any of that, Heavenly fails because it seems to be written by someone who is sheltered and unwilling to really explore these dark topics. For example, the books try to discuss alcoholism, but I don't think the author has any personal experience of that, and I don't think she has a great understanding of it, and I don't think she did any real research into the into it, so it just feels like a very special episode of a kids show from the '90s. >> Pills? You mean you really are taking drugs? >> I need them. >> Jessie, give me those. >> I NEED THEM BACK! I HAVE TO SING! [screaming] I'M SO EXCITED! I'M so excited! I'm I'm [laughter] so I'm scared! >> And so, whenever serious topics come up in these books, it just feels silly, and you just have to shake your head and laugh at it. They also have other problems though, like there's very little plot, the world-building just does whatever individual scenes require, and the prose reads like bad fanfiction, again, similar to Onision. So, let's get started. Uh I do not recommend you read these books. I honestly would just recommend you watch this video so you can experience all the funny bits without all the boring bits, but hey, it's up to you. We'll get started now, and spoilers ahead. By the way, if you like this sweater, you can buy it down in my merch store, along with some other stuff. Go do it. Now, go buy my merch. So, book one, Heavenly, the main character girl for this series is named Zoe, and it's a bad young adult paranormal romance from the late 2000s, so you know everything about her already. She's plain, ordinary, and lacking in personality. Boys love her just because she's the protagonist. She's also in the early stages of alcoholism, I think. She has two younger siblings. She has a 16-year-old brother named Luke, and he is perfectly nice except that he smokes weed with his friends sometimes. And the books treat him smoking weed as being far worse than Zoey's actual alcoholism. At least I think it's supposed to be actual alcoholism. Again, it's not handled well, and it's not spelled out very clearly, either. "I needed that bottle now. Sure, I drank, but my drinking was on a need to drink basis, not like Luke's addiction." The two of them also have a 5-year-old sister named Abrielle, I think is how you say that, and she is severely autistic. So, even though she's 5 years old, she can't talk yet. She just babbles. She has to be bathed and fed by others. Everyone always has to keep an eye on her, otherwise she'll hurt herself or break something. She's just a constant source of stress for all her family members, who, according to these books, has no thoughts or feelings of her own. Yeah, it's not handled very respectfully. One day, Zoey is with Abrielle at the park when she notices that she's missing. She runs around looking for her for a minute, and then she finds her. Abrielle is with a strange man that she's never seen before. He's young and handsome and seems friendly enough, and he introduces himself as Matthias. Zoey thanks him for looking after her sister, then she takes her away, and Matthias just disappears, and Zoey's like, "Huh, he kind of creeps me out." And that's it. That's their first meeting. Later, Zoey meets up with her best friend, Britt, which is short for Brittany. The two of them are party girls as written by someone who has never met party girls or even been in their vicinity. Like they go out all the time, they hook up with random guys, they get shit-faced drunk, and seemingly that's it. And it's not that people don't do that, it's that they do this all the time. It is implied, very heavily implied, that Zoe is seen as sort of a popular mean girl at her school. And it's never outright stated, which makes sense because these books are told from Zoe's point of view, and she doesn't have a whole lot of self-awareness when it comes to things like that, or anything, actually. So, it makes sense that she wouldn't just come out and say, "Oh, yeah, I'm kind of a popular party girl." That's actually a nice bit of subtlety. The point is, according to the book, they do this all the time, and it's their only real hobby, whereas in reality, it tends to be more of an occasional thing. Like Like even people who do it all the time, they don't do it every day. But Zoe and Britt seem to do it every day. And all the party scenes feel kind of like how I would have imagined this sort of party when I was like 15 and had no friends. There's just a vague sense of music and dancing and alcohol. And that's it. We hooked arms and entered the pulsing place. [music] Lights were low. Candles made everything smell like fruit and cinnamon, the flames creating flickering shadows on every wall. A shiver sent thrills through my body, thrills that reverberated with the pounding [music] bass beat. Couples stood locked in corners kissing. Hands groped. I watched, jealous it wasn't me being ravished, [music] more determined to be ravished before the night was over. Yeah, that's definitely how a teenage girl talks. However, in spite of all this crazy partying and all the hard liquor, No one ever does any marijuana's. That's just going too far. At one point Britt asks Zoe where her brother Luke is and she says he's hanging out with a guy named Sam and Britt goes, "The drug guy?" Like, yeah, even Britt, the obnoxious empty-headed party girl, thinks that the guy who sells weed is some sort of monster. >> All I did was knock on the door and the big giant answered. He told me you weren't there. Not surprising from a drug lord. >> Luke snorted. That's Hank. He's not a drug lord. >> Dealer, lord, whatever. They're all the same. >> [ __ ] A girl like her would be doing ecstasy and acid twice a week, which is what I mean when I say this book feels like it was written by a sheltered person. She clearly doesn't understand just how casual drugs, even hard drugs, are in this sort of partying scene. So, Britt goes off with a guy named Weston. Remember Weston for later. And Zoe gets drunk and throws up in the bushes, which yeah, heavy drinking does that. At least when normal people drink too much they get sick. When I drink too much I start to understand why my dad left. Later their family goes to church and Abria wanders off again and then Matthias finds her again and hands her off to Zoe again. And Zoe starts thinking that maybe he's a stalker. And I just need to say it's never directly stated that Zoe and her family are Mormons, but they do go to church multiple times in these books and it is specifically said that they live somewhere near Salt Lake City. So, my head canon is that they're Mormons. And I'm pretty sure the author is, too, which like yeah, I I hate to point out that that makes all of this make a lot more sense, but it does make all of this make a lot more sense. So, Matthias keeps showing up and he specifically shows up at a few points where Abria is about to hurt herself. Like there's one scene where she's playing around near an open window and she might fall out and he like grabs her and closes the window so she's safe. And when Zoe confronts him, he just straight up tells her he is a guardian angel. And Zoe finds out pretty quickly that no one else can see him. And also he can just teleport around and disappear. But Zoe doesn't believe him when he says that he's a guardian angel at first. Yeah, she has to speak to him like three times and witness his powers again multiple times before she finally goes, "Oh my gosh, you really are a guardian angel." And I'm not sure why Zoe is able to see him when no one else can. She's the main character. She's just different and special somehow. At one point she goes to her sister's school and she starts ranting and raving about a man who's following them and no one else can see him so she just looks like a crazy person and this never leads anywhere. Meanwhile, Britt seems to be dating Weston, the guy she went off with at the party and presumably they had sex but I don't think it's ever directly stated. And also Zoe decides very quickly that she's in love with Matthias. Uh yeah, okay. I guess he's hot and he's nice and she's the main character. Now they're in love. That's that's all we need. To be in love. I don't [ __ ] know, man. However, the two of them can't touch. It's not allowed. But then Zoe does it anyways and there's a big magical spark that they both feel and now Matthias is her guardian angel, too. I don't know what any of the rules are for being a guardian angel in this world, I'll be honest, even after finishing the trilogy. But yeah, Matthias is just her and Abria's guardian angel now. And also, Matthias and Zoey can read each other's thoughts. And if you're thinking that this is going to come up again at some point, don't worry. It doesn't. I think the book is just straight-up forget that she's supposed to be able to read his mind. >> That's stupid. Use your common sense. >> I swear I am not leaving anything out. This all happens exactly as I'm describing it. Matthias tells Zoey some of his backstory. He says that he was born in 1907 and he died in 1927. So, he died when he was 20 years old, but this book came out in 2009, so I guess he's really 112 years old. That I don't know. And Zoey asks him what it was like to live back then when, {quote} everything was wild and carefree. Zoey, [snorts] he lived through World War I and the influenza epidemic that killed tens of millions of people and through the early stages of the Great Depression. >> [bell] >> And not long after this, Matthias tells her that he died because he was murdered. And that's when we get the quote that I read out at the start of this video. This whole thing sent me on a weird mental tangent where I started wondering what it would be like if the love interest in one of these books actually talked like someone from 1927. You know, I really don't like it when you vote. I feel like that would not only be more realistic, but a lot funnier. Boy, this neighborhood sure has a lot of Italians in it. So, Zoey finds some pills in Luke's bedroom. I guess he's doing harder drugs in addition to smoking weed. And she does try to handle it without telling her parents, which is dumb. Yes, you shouldn't do that, but I do understand why she did it. Like, she's concerned about her brother, but she also doesn't want him to get in trouble. This is one of the few moments in any of the books where I felt like the characters really did love and care about each other. But, then later, uh Luke tells their parents that the pills are actually Zoe's, and she manages to convince them that actually they belong to Luke. And this plot thread is dropped in favor of just continuing to focus on the devil's lettuce. >> Brady's brother, Kevin, opened the door. He had black shaggy hair and wore the uniform all skaters and druggies wore. Pants past the butt and huge t-shirts. >> Now is a good time to mention that Zoe works at the school newspaper. This is only important for a couple of pages, and then it never comes back up. But, there's another guy who works at the newspaper, whose name is Chase, and he can also see guardian angels. Chase wants to interview Zoe, as well as some other people, about the guardian angels, so that he can write about it and tell the world. And for some reason, Zoe gets mad at him about this. Like, she says that it would, quote, "cheapen what they have." >> Some people are really [ __ ] stupid. >> I don't know. Like, the books make no ex- no attempts to explain her thought process there. And eventually, near the end of the book, he does agree not to tell anyone. So, I guess the book is supposed to be trying to tell us that Zoe is right, but I just don't understand her thoughts there. Cuz she sees tons of other guardian angels over the course of the books. Like, she sees them out doing their thing, and they seem to be nothing but helpful. And I don't know, I feel like if Chase and them wrote about it, people would either think they're crazy, and it wouldn't make much difference, or people would be happy knowing that they have guardian angels looking after them. I don't see how it would cheapen anything. Zoey is still an alcoholic though, and she actually drives drunk at least twice and the books barely remark on it. Because, you know, weed is just so much worse than alcohol. But, she also texts and drives a bunch and everyone seems to think it's okay. And even even worse, she does that late 'oughts texting where everything is abbreviated. You know, like, are you okay? I have to go home. I I'm really glad that that style of texting died out. But, despite the books trying to say that Zoey is like an outright alcoholic, she never actually showcases any symptoms of alcohol dependency like having strong cravings or being nauseous and sweaty if she hasn't had any had anything to drink. But, then Matthias is in her life and he makes her a better person just by existing. So, she just stops drinking and I guess that's fine. >> That was easy. >> I don't know, man. The these are weird, but when they do stuff like that, it actually does irritate me. And because Zoey is just a good girl now, she tries to get Britt to stop drinking and partying too. And she tries to get Luke to stop smoking weed. It's like when one of your friends joins a cult and gets all weird about things you used to do together and then they start threatening to tell the police where the bodies are buried so you have to make them disappear too. You know, we've all been there. Zoey gets real holier-than-thou for a while here. Uh, but then I guess she relapses and goes back to her old partying ways and she nearly has sex with a guy that she just met, but he can't remember her name so she leaves. >> If he wanted to play, I could play. In fact, it had been a while since I played with a guy and pleasure dripped through my body catching in a refractive pool low in my stomach. >> [laughter] >> Oh, [ __ ] I forgot about that line. Matthias says that he can't be around her anymore for reasons that I don't think he ever says why, but he says he can't be around her anymore and he disappears. So now she's sad and emo for a while and then she starts seeing evil black spirits around and these black spirits are just like guardian angels. No one can see them, but they seem to influence people to do bad things and it's not clear if they are the ones that cause people to act badly or if they just feed off of negative emotions or maybe they they just kind of influence people, but they're not the source of all evil. It's really not clear. Personally, I don't like it when stories make it out like oh spirits like that are the source of all evil because it kind of gives people a pass for their own shitty behavior, but whatever, that's a discussion for another time. So later Zoe is at a party with Weston, remember him from earlier, and one of Weston's friends whose name is Brady. Now Zoe calls Brady a [ __ ] in her head and Zoe calls people retards a lot actually, like both in her narration and in her dialogue, which I kind of like that. It does help give the the books a little bit of an edge, so the darker stuff feels just a little bit more real. Like it still doesn't work that well, but you know, it helps the dark stuff feel like it does exist in the same world as the rest of the book when she uses harsh language like that. It wouldn't work if she was calling him a do-do head. Weston and Brady then drug Zoe and attempt to sexually assault her while she's unconscious. Why yes, that did escalate extremely [ __ ] quickly. Don't worry, it doesn't get far. Zoe realizes what's going on and then she passes out and when she wakes up, uh they're both gone and Matthias is there and Matthias just says he quote took care of Weston and Brady. And later we learn that what he meant by that was that he gave them very painful boils all over their bodies, so they left her alone and just went home. Zoe doesn't do anything else though. You know, she doesn't report them or anything, even though her friend is involved with one of one of them and could easily get hurt. I guess Britt doesn't matter. The important part is that now she knows that Weston loves her for real. You know, she's been able to read his mind for most of the book, but now she knows for certain. The force in his eyes left no room for doubt. The universe, as I knew it, wasn't capable [music] of holding the magnitude of Matthias' feelings. Whatever sphere he dwelt in, wherever heaven was, my mortal brain couldn't grasp the extent of his love. That line is painful, and you can tell that the author thought it was really good because that's how that chapter ends. So, Luke decides that he's not going to smoke weed anymore, which uh good for him, I guess. And then Zoe tells Britt's parents about her partying, so she gets grounded and then Britt gets mad at Zoe about it, which it is a little strange that Britt's parents didn't notice her going out every single night and coming back drunk a lot of the time. They never figured that out, but whatever, Zoe told them, so now she's a snitch. And then Zoe is driving along and then she gets in a fatal car accident. Once again, it just happens like that. There's no build-up or anticipation or anything. She's just driving along and now oh, [ __ ] car crash. It happens that abruptly and then she's in the hospital and then her she says goodbye to her family and then she ascends to heaven and while she's in heaven, she sees Matthias. She's happy to be there. She's not at all upset at having just [ __ ] died, and then the book ends. Like that is how the first book ends. Maybe the author wasn't originally planning for there to be sequels, I don't know, but that that's just how [ __ ] wraps up. >> WHAT IS HAPPENING? >> Now it's time for book two, Penitence, which also has a terrible cover of just some clouds with a face in it. The first couple pages of this book are Zoe just up in heaven with Matthias and they're all happy and carefree up there, and then she comes back to life. It It's like literally half a chapter that she's in heaven before she comes back. She thinks that maybe God had other plans for her, but I have no idea what those plans are. Like even after finishing all the books, I could not tell you why God decided she needed to be brought back to life. So, she wakes up in the hospital and it turns out she wasn't really dead, per se. She was just comatose for a while, I I think. I really don't know, man. The last book made it seem like she actually died. And Zoe is happy to be alive, but she also gets really upset that now there's a scar on one of her boobs from the car crash. And look, I can understand being upset that you have a new scar. Like you feel uglier than you were, and that's not good for your self-esteem. I can get that. That said, Zoe, you just came back from the dead. Have some perspective. Part of me hated them because they had such easy lives. Another part of me knew everyone had their problems, but surely none crushed as deeply as mine. She spends literally an entire chapter just complaining about how one of her boobs looks weird now. Like again, I get it, but you'd think that by focusing on it so much, that would become important later on in the books, but no. It's mentioned a couple times in the first few chapters of this book, and then it gets forgotten about completely until the very end of book three, when it gets mentioned briefly again. There is even less plot in this book than there was in the first one. Like the guy who hit Zoe's car was apparently a friend of Luke's and they say that once and then it never comes back up. Apparently, we learn that Matthias broke some sort of guardian angel law when he stopped Zoe from getting assaulted by Brady and Weston. We don't know what law he broke. We don't know how he broke the law. It's not important. What's important is that he can't be her guardian angel anymore. But then just a little while later he comes back to be her guardian angel again and it's like nothing ever happened. And if you're anything like me, you're probably wondering what the [ __ ] is the point of a guardian angel if they can't guard you from being sexually assaulted? Like we see guardian angels protect people from hurting themselves in other ways or getting hurt in other ways, I should say. But apparently they're not allowed to stop rape. Read into that however you'd like. In this book, Zoe starts to make friends with a nerdy loner at her school whose name is Christie. And well, that's about all I can say about that subplot really. After a little while, Zoe learns that Weston actually didn't want to rape her. Brady wanted to rape her and Weston just kind of went along with it. Therefore, according to the books, Weston is innocent and did nothing wrong. Again, that is I want to emphasize that's not what I am saying. That is what the books ARE SAYING. >> WHAT THE [ __ ] [screaming] >> SO THEN, ZOE, upon learning that Weston was only an accessory to an attempted rape, she decides that he's actually cool and then she starts dating him and then Britt is jealous because Britt liked him and this is the plot now. This is the main source of drama. Zoe finds another guardian angel named Albert who starts hanging around and he acts kind of weird and suspicious. He doesn't really do anything at first, but he just acts kind of weird and suspicious. And then Matthias shows up and chases him off and Matthias tells her that Albert was actually his father, you know, back when he was alive, obviously. And Albert died sometime after Matthias did from we actually don't know what the cause was. This is when we learn some more of Matthias's backstory. You see, he wasn't just a regular dude who got murdered in 1927. He and his father were actually involved in organized crime and we don't get a lot of detail about this, but it's implied that Albert was actually a high-ranking mobster of some sort and he got into some sort of debt with Italian mobsters and he sold out Matthias and allowed him to be killed by those mobsters in order to pay off his debt. Again, I don't know exactly how this works cuz it's not explained very well, but they were both bootleggers. Matthias is implied to have murdered people more than once as part of his dad's criminal enterprise and despite this after he died, he went to heaven. Don't think about that too hard. But he says that Albert, who presumably died sometime after Matthias did, the cause is unknown, but he died eventually. And he's not a guardian angel, he's an evil spirit. He's the one that brings all those shadowy dark spirits to do whatever it is they do. Again, it's not explained super well. I think they just influence people to be bad. And then Christie, the lonely nerd from earlier, is throwing her first ever party and Zoe decides to help her out with that. So she invites a few people over and it gets a bit hectic, but everyone seems to be having a good time. And then Brady, the attempted rapist from earlier, Brady decides to play the choking game and accidentally kills himself. Once again, this just [ __ ] happens completely out of nowhere. Now, the choking game is a real thing that people have done and by the way don't play it by the way. Like people actually have died doing that. Like I remember when I was like 10 or 12 years old which would have been not long before this book came out actually. I did hear about the choking game and in no uncertain terms a bunch of adults told us like do not play that you can hurt yourself. And like yeah, this isn't totally unrealistic. It just doesn't fit that well. Like like it just comes so out of nowhere that I had to stop for a while and go what? What the [ __ ] am I reading? And then I went back and reread to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding something and went nope. Yeah, Brady the attempted rapist just accidentally killed himself off screen and then other people come in and find his body hanging and they're like well, we got to deal with this now. They don't try to hide the body or anything. They call the police and the party is over just so we're clear. And obviously Zoe didn't like Brady that much, but Weston was his friend and Weston is sad about him dying and Zoe tries to comfort him with this over this and look, I almost get it because I I Brady was a piece of [ __ ] Yeah, but he did still have people that loved him and I guess the books are trying to maybe deal with that a little bit because you know, that is a real thing that really happens. Pieces of [ __ ] die and some people will celebrate, but other people will be sad about it. That's a real thing in the real world. I get that, but Weston is a piece of [ __ ] too and I don't care about his feelings. Anyways, the word gets out around town and a bunch of people are sad that Brady hung himself which is outrageous. The word is hanged. Anyways, Zoe like I said didn't tell anybody about the attempted rape and she wants to be supportive of Weston because he's her boyfriend now, I guess. So, they go to Brady's funeral together and at At funeral Zoe sees Brady's ghost, I guess, and he's surrounded by dark spirits. I I think he's meant to be an evil spirit, kind of like Albert, but I don't know. She sees an apparition of him there. He's surrounded by dark spirits, and then those spirits surround Brady's mom. And then Brady's mom pulls out a gun. >> Wait, where did you get that gun from? >> I don't know. >> You're at a funeral. You're at your son's funeral. Why do you have a gun? Did you already own it, or did you go out and purchase that beforehand? Because if so, [ __ ] you. You're the reason we have mandatory waiting periods. Anyways, Brady's mom, upon being surrounded by the dark spirits, pulls out a gun and tries to shoot Weston because she blames him for Brady's death. I Again, this is not explained at all, and it happens so abruptly. But, as Zoe sees this and realizes what's happening, she actually jumps in the way to take the bullet for Weston. But, luckily, she doesn't get shot because Matthias appears, and he just makes the bullet vanish into thin air, so she's fine because I guess guardian angels can do that. Yeah, everyone in the history of the world who's ever gotten shot just didn't have a guardian angel looking after them, I guess. Brady's mom then gets arrested, and that's it. We don't hear about her ever again through the rest of the series. She's She's just gone now, and Zoe doesn't even stop and think about that time that somebody attempted to murder her. And then Luke texts Zoe asking for help with Chrissy, and then the book ends. That is the end of Penitence. Finally, we reach book three, Absolution. This cover also has a face, but it's kind of hidden in the background and hard to notice. Like, if you're looking at that and you go, "Wait, is there a face there?" You're not going crazy. It It is there, don't worry. And this book has the least amount of stuff in it to talk about. Like, I kept looking for things I could giggle at, and I went over the book again for this video, but there's really nothing here. There There's nothing at all. Thankfully, it's also the shortest book cuz it's only a little over 200 pages. So, we pick up right where the last book ended off, and Zoe goes to Luke and Chrissy because Chrissy is actually running away from home. Uh her dad is covered in dark spirits, like just absolutely covered in them, and it is implied, and then later confirmed, that he's been sexually abusing Chrissy for a while. And for most of the book, Chrissy just lives in Luke's car, and she goes in and out of their house, and their parents notice her coming in and out of their house, but they don't say anything, wh- which is a little strange, but I guess they're just really neighborly. Zoe finally decides to tell her parents that she can see guardian angels and evil spirits, and they just immediately believe her with no questions asked. A- and Luke also backs her up because he can see them, too. And they just believe that their children are seeing evil spirits and angels and stuff going around. Which brief reminder, their parents found out that they were abusing pills in the first book, and that was only like a month ago in their time. Ma- Maybe that should factor into their thoughts on these children seeing evil spirits. Maybe? Just No? Okay. >> You are really dumb, for real. >> So, Matthias comes over and warns them that his father, Albert, is like really dangerous, and he keeps trying to influence people to be bad. I think. Again, if Albert has any sort of evil plan, it's never explained or elaborated on. Weston and Zoe start to get closer, but Albert makes him try to assault her again, and this time violently, but he pulls back at the last second. So, again, according to the book, this is not what I'm saying, it's perfectly fine that he just attempted to sexually assault her again because he pulled back at the last second and felt bad about it. [ __ ] this book. Zoe overhears her parents arguing about going to a conference in Boston to get Aubrey a some specialized help. Yeah, you remember Aubrey? The autistic sister? Yeah, she still exists. Chrissy finally comes out and admits to the other characters that her dad has been abusing her, and they call the cops. And when the cops come over there to like collect her for questioning and everything, she just runs out into the woods to try and escape them. I >> WHY? >> WHICH I don't know why she did that, but she runs out into the woods, and then they go after her and catch her immediately. So, she's safe now, but Albert is still trying to make people evil. So, I guess there's a plot here still. So, then Zoe, sensing Albert nearby, runs out into the woods, and it looks like Albert is about to do uh something to her. Like, I I don't know what he's about to do, but it's evil, I'm sure. And then Matthias appears out of nowhere and hits Albert with a beam of light, and I guess Albert is good now, so he starts crying, and then Matthias disappears. And a couple of days later, Albert shows up and talks to Zoe, and he's nice now. He thanks her for helping him out, and then he vanishes. Presumably, he goes up to heaven because he's just he's just good now. So, Zoe goes to prom with Weston. Uh she's actually about to finish high school. She's 18 years old, and we know nothing about her plans for college, or if she's getting a job, or what. And then this is the point where she randomly remembers that she has a scar on one boob, and she's kind of upset about that, but now she's less upset than she used to be. Like I said, despite the intense focus on it earlier, it doesn't play a role in anything anything. And then, around the same time as prom, Matthias shows up and talks to Zoe one last time. He just says goodbye and says that they won't see each other again until after she dies. He says that he, quote, put himself in her place, and I have no idea what that means. Like Zoe doesn't ask him what it means, the book doesn't explain what it means. Matthias just says he put himself in her place. Maybe she was destined to die in the car crash, but like Matthias let her die in the car crash. God himself brought her back. Like is destiny a thing in this universe, and Matthias thwarted destiny? Like maybe when he made the bullet disappear before it hit her, that was him putting himself in her place. I I really don't know. None of this adds up, and the book is almost over. Let's just move on. The epilogue takes place a couple of months later. Zoe is at a barbecue with Weston and her family. Aubria is getting more specialized care, so she's actually learning to talk more. And Zoe wonders if she misses Matthias, but it's okay because he's watching over them. And that's it. That's the end. That That is the end of this trilogy. So, what did I like about this? Uh I like that it attempted to cover sensitive topics. Like it It does it poorly, but hey, it tried. Uh I liked that Zoe and her family were already religious at the beginning of the books. Like a lot of these angel romance books take place in weirdly secular worlds, and this one doesn't have that problem. Cuz in stuff like Fallen or Hush Hush, the leads are never shown being religious in any way, nor are any of the supporting characters usually. And then living proof that the Abrahamic myths are at least partially real, show up in front of them, and they treat it with the shock and reverence of learning they need to replace their transmission. You know, none of the characters ever stop and go, "Whoa, Christianity is proven to be at least partially true. This is going to change my viewpoint on some things." Like, if a person wasn't very religious, that would shake up their worldview just a bit. But, in this book, for Zoey, it just confirms what she already believed to be true. So, it makes sense that she wouldn't treat meeting an angel as a world-shattering revelation. I liked that some of the lines were funny. Not very many of them, but a couple of them got a chuckle out of me just for being stupid. Uh I think the books were trying. That's about it. That's about all the praise I have. These books are bonkers at times, and outside of that, they're mostly boring. But, the way they handle basically everything is just painful, man. Like, I was kind of expecting at the beginning for Aubrie to be a caricature of autism, but I don't think she is. The problem really with Aubrie is that she's just a prop to kick off the plot. You know, she's just there to cause stress and difficulties for everyone else. Like, she's not a character at all, and that's really dehumanizing. Disabled people and disabled kids are still human beings who deserve respect, you know? I don't have any autistic siblings, but my mom does. Like, she spent a lot of time looking after my aunt when they were young, at which granted, I don't know if my aunt was ever actually diagnosed with autism cuz this was, you know, a long time ago. I think when she was a kid, the doctors just called her mentally [ __ ] but I'm pretty sure what she has is autism. The point I'm getting at is that when you're forced to take care of disabled loved ones a lot, it can cause stress and resentment towards them. And the books do acknowledge that, but they don't do anything with it, which is disrespectful to people who are disabled, whether autistic or otherwise. It acts like they're just a burden for others, and that's bad. Abria isn't an anchor around her family's ankle, and the books really needed to clarify that no, whatever else, they do still love and care about her, but I don't think they really do, and that's disappointing. The fact that Weston is an attempted rapist, and the books just kind of forgive him for it, despite him not ever doing anything to redeem himself, is gross, but at least it is consistent. Because Matthias went to heaven despite being a murderer. You know, but that said, after he went to heaven, he became a guardian angel, and I guess he did save people's lives as a guardian angel, so he redeemed himself after the fact, but then Albert just gets hit with the goodness laser, and now he's redeemed, which even in Christianity, that's not how it works. You still have to, generally speaking, confess your sins and accept Jesus in order to be saved from them. It doesn't seem like Albert was like corrupted by any sort of magical evil that they can just easily wash away. He was just a bad person when he was alive, and then he continued being a bad person when he died, or after he died. He does get one very sympathetic moment, though. There's a flashback to when Matthias was a child, and the two of them are very poor and homeless, and one night Albert just swears to Matthias that they won't live like this anymore, and then he just becomes some sort of crime boss. again, we don't get details about how he did that, but he just becomes some sort of crime boss, and then they don't have to worry about money anymore. Like, there is a character there. It's just so mixed up with poorly explained magical mumbo jumbo that we never see the character. You know, he loves his son so much that he's willing to become a ruthless crook in order to provide for him, but then he sacrifices his son to save himself and his money. Like, that's not backstory for a minor character. That's a whole ass Greek tragedy by itself. And the fact that we get very little information, very little detail about it is a shame. I touched on this earlier, but all of the characters who do bad things in these books seem to be influenced or corrupted by the dark spirits, and I dislike that because it implies that people aren't capable of just being awful on their own. And this isn't a story about redemption or finding religion. It's not a story about living with a disabled family member. It's not even a romance really because, like I said, Zoey just decides she's in love with what's-his-fuck, Matthias, very quickly after learning that he's an angel. She just says, "Well, I guess we're in love now." So, I wouldn't really call it a romance. Part of me feels like these books are some sort of stealth parody. You know, it feels like they're making fun of all the weird self-indulgent paranormal romances that were all over the place back in the late '00s and early 2010s. The first book, at least, feels that way, particularly the ending where Zoey just dies and then finds eternal bliss despite never doing anything to deserve that. And she just perfectly fine leaving behind all her loved ones and everything. So, that one kind of feels like it could be a parody, but then the sequels all just play it completely straight. I don't know, man. The plot is nonexistent, the characters are insane people, the world building is never brought up, the writing itself is occasionally kind of funny, but that's really the only thing to like here. [ __ ] these books, man. Like, it is truly rare for me to read something that makes me feel like I'm losing it, but these books really did make me feel like I was losing it. They are unpleasant to sit through on every level. They took me like 2 months to finish them, and then it took me several more months to get around to filming this damn thing. But, they are at least kind of fun to tell the rest of you about. 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