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First of all: negative stars, a shelf created especially for this book, because it left such a bad taste in my mouth that the only stars I can possibly give are those below zero.

As you might have guessed, Branded made me angry, and therefore it will be impossible to review this without spoilers. However, many of the plot is so obvious and unoriginal that the spoilers aren't that substantial. Also, some explicit language will be used, because sometimes there is just no better way to express your opinion. Note as well that this is a rant disguised as a review, so it's long. You have been warned.

I considered several times to just DNF this one, but a part of me hoped it would get better. It did not.

I originally had this one classified as "high hopes", but after re-reading the blurb, I honestly have no idea what gave me that impression. I blame the cover because angst, love triangle, and insta-love were already pretty much announced. It's probably my soft spot for (fallen) angels retellings, although the only decent ones I have read this far are Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Angelfall.

Edit: I can't believe I forgot Unearthly. How did that happen? I blame you, Branded.

The basic set-up

Jessica is a 20-year-old runaway who is a housekeeper for an elderly couple. She lives next door to Sally Thomas, a woman who has been the victim of spousal abuse, and spends her days shopping groceries for the two of them. When she's not playing the good Samaritan, she's a general recluse who only sleeps one night every four days or so. In her dreams, she's a proxy for a recently deceased person who is now being judged by angels and almost always branded, the sign that s/he's condemned to an afterlife in hell. She has the scars to prove it. They include the branded X in her neck, which always throbs after her nightly adventures and then there is something with her having protruding shoulder wings. Some random flashbacks break up the narrative even more and then one night, yes middle of the night, a guy bursts in and takes up residence in the house she's a caretaker for. Turns out he's the owners' out-of-this-world hotgorgeousdelicious grandson and the owners have died. He's completely random, travelling the world to seem interesting and stuff. When he conveniently needs to go meet with his lawyer for a week, because something is wrong with the will - let me think, maybe the fact that the grandparents left loads of money to a girl that doesn't even work for them now, but can still live in the house because logic, convenience and vicinity - we're introduced to the second love interest who has dark features and, of course, a British accent. Legitimately evil that one is. It's practically a given with him being European and all.

On to the part that gave me so much rage that I almost started kindle-throwing. It's quite sad really, because my kindle was a Christmas present and I wanted to inaugurate it with an angel story, hoping it would be decent and enjoyable but lol no, the universe doesn't allow some reading relaxation when you're in the middle of exams because obviously you just need more stress and exasperation in those times. Anyway, the rage-inducing factor.

As I already said in my very objective synopsis, Jessica's neighbour used to be married to an abusive piece of shit. Jessica tells us so repeatedly, but the causality within these passages is just off. At times, it is used as a ploy to illustrate how good of a person Jessica is for helping out Sally, who is, by the way, so traumatised that she can't leave the house and lives in perpetual fear of human contact. I'm sorry, being nice to a victim of abuse shouldn't be used as character development, it's fucking basic human decency. Worse, however is the passage that introduces Sally's abuse and its conclusion. The conclusion is that the husband was reported - good -, had to pay - even better - and that's why Sally Thomas is so disgustingly rich that she can afford to just throw one hundred bills at Jessica. WHUT? It gets better. Before we know how Jessica earns an income, this is given as the explanation why she can go shopping for groceries every single chapter before da boyz show up.

And this is where I drop dead because I choked on my disgust.

EXCUSE ME? You know what, I'm willing to chalk this fucking disturbing plotline up to a case of bad causality, in the sense of "Milton wrote Paradise Lost. His wife died. He wrote Paradise Regained." or my personal version "I used to believe in God. My sister was born. I lost my faith.", but let me just add that it is things like these that prove why self-publishing doesn't work for everyone. I'm not saying self-publishing should be banned, because I'm actually very much in favour of new ways for people getting out the stories they feel the need to tell, but this wasn't the only reason Branded could have benefited from editing. More on that later. The bottom line here is that you don't exploit a trauma such as domestic abuse to justify why a character has money, and in extension, how the MC can provide without a decent income. (Again it wasn't yet stated that Jessica made her money by housesitting). The only thing such a connection makes me think is "how convenient" and that is the absolute last opinion I want to have when it comes to abuse.


The rest of it was just plain annoying. I have never read Twilight, but seen and read enough to more or less come to the conclusion that Jessica is a Bella Swan rewrite. Also, absolutely nothing happens, except for pretty creepy and disturbing stuff that I'm sure was not meant to be read that way. It had potential with the "living on borrowed time" arc, but the only thing that was used for was to say who was to blame for Jessica's nightmares. Surprisingly, it was everyone but her. I'm not saying this needed a thorough philosophical examination of what time means to the human being to have merit, but this was just ridiculous.

So Jessica. This girl is one big chunk of interior monologue and it never ends. She has no sympathy whatsoever. Take Emily for example. She considers Jessica to be her friend and confides in her. So guess what Jessica's reaction is when Emily tells her that her stepfather used to abuse her and that that is why she has run away from home? Jessica actually gets angry because Emily doesn't want to tell her how she "made the dreams stop". It's also so fucking annoying that Emily's "condemnation" was supposed to be a suspenseful revelation, while it was so very obvious what the one thing that guarantees you a front row seat to eternal condemnation is. I don't even know my Bible that well and it was still easy to guess. Hint: it's not blasphemy, because apparently angels are free agents in this world, which is something I can get behind, but it's used to such ridiculous ends that it all feels so derivative.

There's not even an instinct that tells Jessica to for one moment think of someone besides herself. This also shows in her dealing with Sally. So Alex creepily shows up and follows Jessica around, because apparently the twenty-something gorgeous guy doesn't have a social life. Jessica has a movie night with Sally, which she conveniently forgot because damn Alex and his delicious exterior. He then tags along and both of them think it will be no problem for an unfamiliar man to show up on the doorstep of a person who is so traumatised she can't even do her own shopping. No probs, because blonde-and-blue-eyed Alex is such a good guy that Sally instantly trusts him and her status as the local guy-o-meter will be used when the second love interest shows up. Indeed, it's fucking genius to put an abused woman in that role.

The love interests are not all that great either. It's obvious Alex is supposed to be every good girl's wet dream, but I'm sorry, the moment a boy I barely know bursts into the bathroom when I'm showering, only to ask if I'd like to have dinner with him that evening, I'd pack up my stuff after said shower and run. Not so Jessica, who already knows she will have BIG FEELS for Alex after literally five minutes. Cole is even worse, and his relevance to the story is so nonsensical that the only things you need to know is that he admits that he's been in love with Jessica since the first moment he saw her. Besides the general *yawn* it has been done to death factor, the first time this despicable specimen saw our highly desirable MC was WHEN SHE WAS FIVE (or around that age. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but it was young enough to earn you a one-way prison ticket). So yes, in addition to being physically too perfect for this world and constantly having to remind everyone he "speaks in a British accent" and always staring at Jessica, he is a legitimate pedophile. Not gonna lie, that's kind of a turn-on for me.


Moving on. There is absolutely no reason for Jessica to be living in that house after the owners have died. I also find it strange that no one bothered to inform her they are dead, and that Alex thought it was okay to burst in there in the middle of the night and be like "lol yeah, they're dead, but they left me a shitload of money and I'll pay you and we can both live here because I'm the prettiest boy you've ever seen so my plan can't possibly be creepy and I can't be a psychopath." Of course, it's too far-fetched to call ahead with that information but who cares about such details when we need to get the love story going. And that element is - shocking - problematic. When Alex and Jessica lock lips, it's all very orgasmic and pornographic, but they don't go further because they don't know each other that long/well and it's still a bit too serious. I can genuinely respect that. However, when Alex gives her an expensive bracelet or buys her a fucking wedding ring, this is seen as normal behaviour for a new couple. Hey, I know my brain works in weird and mysterious ways, but I've always thought marriage to be a pretty serious ordeal and frankly, if you don't feel you're ready for sex, I don't know how much diamonds will help your personal comfort with the issue.

Finally, I don't like Jessica's relationships with women. First of all, the girl barely gets out and the only time she uses the internet is to look up the people she had to play proxy for the past night. Nevertheless, she regularly mentions that she hears from "women" that boys like this, or don't do that or want you to whatever. I have a hard time identifying who exactly these women are, because Sally Thomas will definitely tell her to just stay the hell away from men. Also, Jessica ran away from home because of her mother, she has no friends and I find it hard to believe she'd just speak to random women she encounters in the grocery store. Somewhere in the story she decides to take a yoga class and she feels it is necessary to repeatedly tell the reader that it's her big outing to society and why that is so. It's annoying.

Then she gets mad at Emily for allegedly not wanting to help her, when the girl obviously has a hard time telling Jessica what she "needs" to know in the first place and I completely understand Emily for wanting to suppress such a trauma, certainly when you know you have eternity to pay for it. Jessica hates her mother because she thought her daughter was crazy and hysterical, which, in a realistic setting, doesn't seem that weird. I don't know Jessica, but if you so desperately wanted to prove to your mother that something is going on, why not show her your scars? You can't use the excuse that you don't want people to think that you're "in some kind of extreme body art", because I think that as a minor you still need parental permission for that, and let me just tell you, with your outlook on life, you need all the help you can get.

Anyway, who needs that when you have a father who is so awesome that he contacts you five years after you've run away from home, telling you that he's always been on your side, while he conveniently dismisses the fact that he never stood up for you or tried to reason with that dictator of a mother of yours. The fact that he tells you just to ignore your mother is even better, because there's nothing more I want from my father than such a show of respect for the women in my family. Oh, he wants you to write him letters and keep in touch? Do it, he obviously deserved it after years of doing nothing and taking the cheap route in blaming your mother for it. Such a nice guy. He would make a perfect family picture with that admiring pedophile you've got living a few doors down. ZOMG I wish I had your life.

I read reviews of the next books and it seems that it gets even worse. And apparently Cole will be redeemed, because if there's one thing we need it's that the creepy and psychotic bad guy will be shown to be inherently good. Obvies ftw. Plus that we get more angst and melodrama and from what I assume, the language will still be riddled with factual errors, typos and unfinished sentences and generally make no sense whatsoever. I mean, when you have a first-person narrator, you can't just go around writing that she "didn't notice the opened window" or something, because the fact that she didn't notice it when it happened, and doesn't have her attention drawn to it at a later moment, means that she can't possibly have any recollection of it. So how is she still able to talk about it?

Because Jessica just fails at life big time, that's why.

Oh and I wish I had enjoyed the privilege of buying this for free, but because I'm an evil European (Branded-standards), this was not the case, and that makes one more reason why I feel justified writing this angry rant. Needless to say, I can't recommend this to anyone, but luckily, most of it is so mind-numbing that I won't be scarred for life by this.