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review by Megsly

*Warning: possible spoilers ahead.*

Branded follows 20-year old Jessica Bailey, who is a teenage run away who never sleeps. She can usually reach almost 100 hours with no sleep before her body starts caving in on her. The reason she doesn't sleep is because she has night terrors, extreme night terrors. In her dreams, she finds herself locked in a room, awaiting trial. An angel she calls Adam, with gray eyes (which is apparently indicative of whether or not they are fallen or not? Gray means he's neutral territory), retrieves her from her cell and takes her to face a jury of ten; five condemned angels, and five exalted angels decide her fate. If she passes, she is thrown upwards into the heavens, and if she fails a hot bar of metal shaped like an X is pressed into the nape of her neck, branding her before she is hurled down to the pits of hell by the condemned. She's never tried as Jessica Bailey though, it's always someone else's name that is called out.

Sometimes she's tried as a man, sometimes as a woman. Sometimes she's young and sometimes she's old. Every once in a while the good list far outweighs the list of bad things the person has done and sometimes she is lifted to the heavens, but most of the times she's thrown down. Every time, however, she feels the excruciating agony of wings bursting forth from her back, no matter if she's being sent to heaven or hell. Funny thing is, the nightmares aren't just nightmares. Every time she wakes up, Jessica finds a fresh brand on the back of her neck and an outline of wings tracing her shoulder blades and down her side, raised ever so slightly from the rest of her skin. Not surprisingly, because of these nightmares, Jessica has an intense fear of angels. She hates them, despises them with a passion that most people reserve for murderers and child abusers (at one point she has a melt down over someone making snow angels. I did kind of laugh there. I love snow angels. #randomobservations)

After finally giving up on a strained relationship with her mother, Jessica runs away from home at 16 and makes her way north, where she quickly finds a job caring for a house in a small, wealthy community in a town in north western Washington state. At 20, Jessica savors her alone time. She's awkward around others and doesn't want anyone living near her, for fear that they'll hear her screaming at night. She socializes with only one person: Sal, her reclusive neighbor who is barely able to live on her own after suffering extensive injuries from an abusive husband years prior. So when the owner of the house she cares for randomly shows up in the middle of the night, she is less than pleased (not but unhappy enough to overlook the fact that her "boss" is a hottie.)

One thing leads to another, and Jessica is forced to deal with the company of Alex, her young employer who enjoys having her around. She stays in her apartment, but as time progresses the two begin to spend more and more time together. It's a rather cute relationship development, especially considering it's near impossible for her to hide her nightmares from him with only thin walls separating her basement apartment from the rest of the house. Once he knows the truth, she lets it all come tumbling out and surprisingly, Alex never questions her claims of the trails. In the meantime, a new neighbor has moved into the house next to Sal, which has disrupted the woman's way of living. At the same time, in an attempt to find some form of normalcy to balance her relationship with Alex, Jessica has begun attending yoga classes in town which leads her to become friends with Emily, and introduces her to Cole, who is Sal's new neighbor.

Strangely enough, everything seems to tie together very neatly. There are literally only 5 characters. Jessica, Sal, Cole, Alex and Emily. The way these 5 characters wrap up into one another is a little too neat of a package for my liking. It seems a little too ideal, however, I still enjoyed each of the characters. Cole is seemingly obsessed with Jessica, and shows up at all the right times to help her in times of need when Alex is not around. Emily and Jessica find a common connection that I was never anticipating, and Emily holds the answer to ending Jessica's nightmares but will she tell her? And then there is Cole, who both Jessica and Emily find vaguely familiar but neither can figure out why. And then Sal, who's so disrupted by Cole's presence that she attempts suicide, is a dark shadow of worry in Jessica's mind. In the meantime, while Jessica's previously quiet life is becoming more fulfilled with the presence of others, her nightmares are growing worse, her scars burning longer, and strange, perfect feathers are appearing in unexplained places, such as Sal's hospital bed and the edge of Jessica's windowsill. The way this story unfolds is very enjoyable. The author writes very well, there are minor errors in the print, mainly having to do with tense changes (which really annoy me, so perhaps that's why I always zone in on tense errors) but for the post part, the plot carried me past that. I enjoyed the resolution to the story, I thoroughly enjoyed the twist on angelic lore and the way Taylor depicts angels as nothing purely innocent or purely evil. I also found it fascinating the way she handles the judgment of sins against humans. It's a war between good and evil until the very last second before an individual is casts up to heaven or down to hell. The character development is believable, and it's easy to understand why Jessica ran away from home and why she chooses to live in solitude. The changes she makes in herself after meeting Alex are also believable, because of the way the author presents them to the reader. Over all, though I probably won't be going out to add this book to my physical bookshelf, I'll enjoy it on my Kindle and will be looking to add the second book in the series to my Kindle soon as well.

Below is my rating of Branded (Fall of Angels) by Keary Taylor. These are reflective strictly of my opinion of the novels I've read and reviewed, and are not necessarily reflective of the other staff members of MVF.

-Story Elements (plot) � 7
-Character Development - 7
-Grammar & Punctuation - 8
-Prose � 7
-Paranormal Element - 8 Total Score: 7.4/10 (total score is derived from the average of the 5 individuals scores)