Angel by Cliff McNish

Freya is 14, and just beginning to patch her life back together after being visited by an angel when she was eight. It was an event that led to an obsession with angels, institutionalization for mental illness, and continues to threaten her fragile home life after her release. Her older brother Luke has issues with the school bully and is trying to keep Freya unaware of their single father’s life-threatening illness. As Freya desperately tries to fit in with the popular girls at school, the affected cruelty they expect of her alienates Luke and draws the attention of Mestraal, a dark and hideous angel whose manifestations nearly send Freya back to the hospital.
At the same time, Stephanie, a homeschooled girl who faithfully believes in angels, shows up at school. Freya turns to her, and her simultaneous need for a friend who believes and terror of losing her mind leads to her rejection of Stephanie, who becomes suicidal. As things reach a deadly climax, the first angel that appeared to Freya returns to tell her that she is half a human and half-angelic, and it is up to her to make some difficult choices between saving Stephanie and her brother Luke. McNish refuses to portray angels as divine servants of God (“Some of us believe, some not, just like humans,” says Mestraal). Rather than slipping into straight fantasy, however, this book straddles the line between religious fiction and the fantastic while managing to feel more like a coming-of-age tale that focuses on the painfully hard interpersonal choices teens face, and the need for a compassion in dealing with others that makes these choices bearable and allows young people to mature. At times frightening, suspenseful, or heartbreaking (and always gently beautiful), Angel quietly and quit successfully examines a divinity that is secular and human, but divine nonetheless. Some mildly graphic violence and mention of teen suicide. Ages 12+.



"Mixing fantasy with brutal reality, McNish's novel is disturbing as well as moving." - School Library Journal, June 2008