Lacrimosa by Christine Fonseca

Release date: March 21 2012

Publisher: Compass Press

Number of pages: 344

My rating: 4/5

After reading Lacrimosa, I was pleasantly surprised. This book exceeded all expectations I had on it. There were quite a few flaws though, but a great plot and likeable characters make up for them (a bit).


Lacrimosa is the story of an Angel who has to come down to earth to kill an Unholy. When the sees him, she can't kill him because he's familiar to her somehow. Turns out the memories from their past lives aren't completely gone, and they were lovers 500 years ago. Nesy, the MC has to kill Aydan, and if she fails the mission, she will be cast down into the abyss.

The characters were good. I liked Nesy, the main character. She was interesting and nice. Aydan was pretty good as well. I liked Cass and Zane, Nesy's friends. The charactersdefinitely weren't the highlight of the book. While they were good and I had no problems with them, they were a bit dull at times, and the characters don't really stand out as being interesting.

Really, the best part of the book was the plot. I was engaged throughout the entire book. Everything is very interesting, and is unlike any other angel book I've read.

The worst part of this book was the worldbuilding. Oh, god, the worldbuilding. Worldbuiling is an incredibly important part of any book. The readers need to know about the characters and the world they live in. You can't have too little worldbuilding, but having too much worldbuilding gets boring. I found myself constantly flipping back to the start of the book, trying to find what something meant. I was constantly lost and confused. The book doesn't tell you a lot about the character's pasts. How do you become an angel? How any are there? What are all their jobs?

And also, a big one: What the hell is a seer?

Seriously. I read the entire book, and while seers are frequently mentioned, I had no idea what the heck people were on about. The flashbacks about their past lives were confusing, and at parts, I had no idea what was going on.

The book gets better towards the end, where you can grasp some of the concepts more.

Lacrimosa was a great read, and I ended up really enjoying it. Better worldbuilding would improve it by miles, though.