The story was rich story!

The day the angels fell is told as story related to the protagonist past. The basis of this vehicle is the battle of good and evil over the tree of live. This was a quick read, I loved the tale of the story, it really captured my attention. I WANT MORE!!!

I love YA literature even as an adult. Authors have freedom within the genre to do so much more than with books marketed for adults in most cases.

I don’t know if this is because the audience is more willing to suspend disbelief or more open to new ideas, but there’s more for a writer to play with that still has a greater chance of being published. That said, Christian fiction has been in a YA drought for a while.

I was worried that works like Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia and L’Engle’s beautiful works were past us. Instead, there are romance primers for girls and next-to-nothing for boys and that’s been the case for many years now.

So imagine my relief and excitement when I heard about Shawn Smucker’s debut novel The Day The Angels Fell.

Smucker’s magical realism novel explores themes of death, good vs. evil, friendship and family. He tells the story of Sam, a twelve year old boy whose mother has just passed in a freak accident in his place. Immediately he decides that he must go on a quest to find the mysterious Tree of Life he’s heard from mysterious characters in town and his best friend, Abra, is along for the ride with him.

Smucker’s writing is clean and his voice is strong. I loved the images he colors his scenes with and his characters are complex and relatable. I was right along with him the whole way.

I often find that contemporary childrens and young adult literature in CBA gets quite preachy or at least harps on the “moral” far too much, but this is not an issue with Smucker’s novel. His themes are clear, but have such a depth. He trusts his audience and I think that will be appreciated by young readers and adults. He—and his characters, for that matter—don’t talk down to the reader. He’s pacing alongside the whole while with some truly profound insights tucked naturally within the story. I was often sent racing from the couch for a pen to underline some absolute gems. (See the meme below!)

I would recommend The Day the Angels Fell to fans of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane and L’Engle’s a Wrinkle in Time. At turns dark and others heartwarming, Smucker’s world is original, heart-wrenching, and profound.

I lOVED this story. I am a big fan of Ness's A Monster Calls and Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane and stylistically and content wise, this falls into the same category as both of those wonderful stories. I don't know that I would lump this into the YA genre, or if I consider it for kids, the themes here are pretty dark. The story here is a timeless one about loss and grief, family, courage and friendship, with a good dose of mythology. Abra especially is just such a great character and this is one of those rare instances where I hope that the author will continue her story, since I'm dying to know where her travels took her.

I can't quite put my finger on it... something about this just didn't strike my fancy. I pushed myself to read at least 50% to give it a chance to grab my interest. But it really didn't.

Someone else pointed out an issue they had which I think is also my main issue... the section where Sam is being told that eternal life is awful and painful and nobody would want it, yet he turns right around and is all, "Don't care - I want my mom here forever!" It just... it was bothersome. He's old enough to comprehend how eternal life could be torturous, especially with the depiction given to him. But he's just blindly flailing and his obsessive "I just want my mom back" mindset rubbed me the wrong way.

And I haven't gotten that far yet but I think it's pretty obvious who these two creepy older men are to this story about the Tree of Life. Sam seems to have those passing thoughts but just brushes them off? Wouldn't you be more concerned if you think someone is a fallen/bad angel? Once again he is too obsessive and one-track-minded about getting his mom back.

I honestly just could not get into this book. So many other people seem to have very much enjoyed it but it just was not the right fit for me.

Will I really wanted to like this book it felt a little too preachy for me.
The tone and prose of the book were beautiful, a sad melody, telling you about a young boy who has lost his mother and is desperately grieving in rural America. Left alone with his father (who likes to tell stories) he seeks comfort in a story he hears about the tree of life.
When two unusual men walk into his life and both expand on the story he has to decide whether death is a gift or a curse.
Great premise, like the characters and feel like this is a good YA book - just not for me.

Lyrical and poetic. Like several other reviewers, I found the format confusing, but the story itself was intriguing. I love stories that take concepts we're familiar with and use them in unexpected ways - in this case, the Tree of Life.

Thanks for the chance to read it.

Actual rating - 3.5 stars.

This book was, overall, quite lovely. It had its ups and downs and in a few places, it dragged a little. It also had a few instances where it stretched credulity and made the reader think, "Hmm.... yeah. That isn't logical."

But still.

Overall, I quite enjoyed the book. The book centers around a young boy who has just lost his mother. However, he has lost her in such a way that her death paid for the life of the tree of life. Basically, as his mother died, the tree of life (think Bible and Garden of Eden) was "born."

There are two angels who are trying to find the tree. One wishes to find the tree and use it for his own nefarious purposes. The other wants to find the tree and destroy it so that it cannot be used for ANYONE's nefarious purposes. This young boy is caught right smack in the middle of both of them. He, of course, wants to find the tree of life as well because he wants to use it to bring his mother back to life.

It is a lovely story of childhood and dealing with the death of a loved one and, more than anything else, a story of friendship because the little boy has a friend, a young girl who is the yin to his yang, the jelly to his peanut butter, the whatever analogy you want to use.

I love the way the story is written. It is told in flashbacks. As the book opens, an old man is readying himself for the funeral of his last friend. As he is getting ready, he starts thinking back to his childhood and, through these memories, tells the story of himself and his friend and the fallen angels and the tree of life.

The flashbacks really help make the story more enjoyable, and the ending to both stories -- the childhood story told in flashbacks and the actual story being told in the book -- are quite satisfying. The book does end in such a way, however, that I feel like it will have a sequel.

Still.... overall, it was quite a lovely story, and I am pleased to have had the chance to read it.

Oh my goodness! This was so good. There are several references to various mythological creatures and ideas that fit into a Christian perspective without being preachy.
I love Sam's voice both as a young kid and as an old man. I'm not sure that I like Sam, but there is a consistency in him that makes me admire him. Abra is fantastic in a best friend way that grows into simply being a fantastic person.
The questions are deep questions. They are not easily answered, nor are they lightly answered. This isn't an emotionally easy book to read, but it is important.

I was torn between giving this book 2 or 3 stars. I decided on 2 because it was an okay book. I think that the way the author shows the characters grieving was a good perspective. However that was the only thing good about this book. I felt like everything else in this book is forced and all these magical elements are just thrown into the story when they didn't actually belong there. It starts off as a normal story about an old name telling the story about a summer his mother dies and then you get thrown into a world of fall angels, "Amaroks", which is essentially a shadow wolf, and a tree of life. The way this book ends also makes no sense but I can't say much more then that as it would give spoilers away.

The Day the Angels Fell by Shawn Smucker Is a story about Sam who's mother was killed in a terrible accident when he was just 12 years old and how he coped with the aftermath of this incident. It's quite scary in parts. I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review

This is Samuel’s story, the story of the lightning tree, the summer his mother died, the summer of the fire. The story is told by Samuel Chambers in his later years and relates to the summer he was 12 when everything went wrong. It is a beautiful and terrifying story. It is a story of good and evil and the lengths one can be lured to try to bring back someone who has been taken.

There are many lessons and the author reminds us that despite our best intentions, our fears, promises, hopes and desires, “everything falls in the end”. There are so many quotable lines:

“Time covers things but that doesn’t mean that they are gone.”

“Some people are so blinded by what’s real that they’re not ready for what’s true.”

“The power of truth and of truth telling, how knowing and telling the truth will always give you the upper hand over someone who is being malicious or deceitful or even simply withholding information.”

“Death, like life is a gift.”

I was drawn in from the first page and my interest in the story never waned.


Thank you NetGalley and Revell a division of Baker Publishing Group for an ARC

Several horror tropes are stirred together in Shawn Smucker’s debut novel, The Day the Angels Fell. The resulting brew is as frightening as that created by the Three Witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and equaling spellbinding. Twelve-year-old Samuel Chambers is forced to answer questions that would test the strength and character of older adults. Yet while the novel deals with difficult moral and ethical struggles, it is at no time preachy. The plot is suspenseful, well thought out, and surprising.

The Day the Angels Fell reminded me of some of Stephen King’s early works. While the former isn’t a horror story, it does have frightening moments.

Three out of Five stars.

Because it seemed like it was in the vein of Neil Gaiman, I set out to read this book with high hopes. I love blended mythologies, but the construction of the story seemed to lack a cohesive flow to connect the ideas coming from various corners of the earth. Also, there was repetition in the language, which made me feel like I should pay attention to those areas for plot purposes, but it never came to any connection in my brain. I liked the narrator, I liked the concept, but the story felt like it needed a bit of a revision.

A likable book. I am fond of the richness of this story.
This story is written in two sides which are past and present. I would have enjoyed more if the past story placed before the present one. I got a bit frustrated that present side spoiled the major events that going to happen in the past story. I wanted a little more surprise and beyond expectation.
However, I like the intriguing plot about the fight of good and evil, via two angels, over the mysterious Tree of Life. What's more, "Death is a gift" is such an unique vision of death. That kind of gripped me what is that significance. I've never had that thought and that vision so it's interest me a lot.
This is very much likable and beautiful story, how the young boy struggle to accept the fact that all are fated to die and this book describes beautifully how they face to it through the adventure.
I rate this book as 3.5 stars. This one is hard to assess, so far, I have changed my mind a couple of times.

The Day the Angels Fell is a story of good versus evil, grief and life and death. The story is told in the through the eyes of the protagonist as an old man reflecting on the summer his mother died and as a young boy experiencing this loss. The characters, including my favorite, best friend Abra, are well written and easy to relate to. As Sam embraces a chance encounter as a way to bring his mom back, his struggles to identify good and evil, and which side he is on. I really enjoyed the story. The ending makes me think another story in this world will follow and I will happily keep an eye out for it.

I enjoyed the switching between perspectives of old and young Sam, but some might find it breaks up the story.

What I enjoyed:

Writing Style - Simply put, Smuckers writing was both engaging and had such a natural flow. I felt like it had such poignant prose, especially following the death of Samuels mother and him coming to terms with his grief.

Portrayal of Grief - I think the representation of loss was so realistic, though Samuel is mature for his age, at least in my opinion, the way he struggles with the concept of death is so true to life and shows he is still a child in many ways. It's a very raw, and human representation of coming to terms with mortality and it was so moving.

Use of time - The novel did not follow a linear narrative entirely, and whilst sometimes this can be confusing, I enjoyed it here. You got older Samuel, retelling the stories of his youth and I found this both wistful and compelling, as a reader trying to fill in the gaps.

What could have been improved:

Pacing issues - I felt like the plot moved so slowly at times that it took me quite a while to finish this book. I did enjoy the story but it was very slow moving, almost to the point where an entire chapter would go by and I didn't feel satisfied with what had happened.

Too much mythology, too little time - This may seem like a silly criticism but I honestly felt like there was an attempt to cover way too much in this book, and it felt disjointed. I liked that it brought in some Inuit elements, such as the Amarok but alongside angels and a tree of life, it felt a little too much and I think there could have been better use of time to enable better story telling.

Ending / Lack of resolution - I was left quite confused by the ending, perhaps this is a opening for a sequel? Otherwise I was left quite dissatisfied by it. It was revealed that a certain character had a major role to play in the story but this was revealed way later and I would have liked to hear more about that rather than a plot inserted at the end. It seemed rather hasty and odd, but as I said, perhaps another book will follow.

Thank you so much to Revell via netgalley for sending me an ARC copy of The day the angels fell by Shawn Smucker. The day the angels fell will be released on September 5, 2017.

The day the angels fell is partially told in the present with an elderly man and in the past when he was about 12.

Our main character is working through grief and battling good and evil over the tree of life.

I would have enjoyed the story more if we got the past first. Then everything he did would have had more meaning and depth. Seeing the old mans life and how he delt with things was still well written but i would have liked that extra knowledge first instead of being spoiled for the events we soon get to read.

The story was rich and full of life with its deep and emotional topics.

This is a marvelous book that I got from netgalley for an honest review. It was beautifully written with reality and fantasy mixing together perfectly, refusing to let me put this book down until the end. I absolutely loved this and can't wait to read more from Shawn. He is a master writer with such a way with words.