Early to Death Early to Rise by Kim Harrison

Publication Date: May 25, 2010
Source: Purchased by Me
Summary from Goodreads:

Seventeen, dead, and in charge of Heaven's dark angels—all itching to kill someone.

Madison Avery's dreams of ever fitting in at her new school died when she did. Especially since she was able to maintain the illusion of a body, deal with a pesky guardian angel, and oh yeah, bring the reaper who killed her to his untimely end. Not exactly in-crowd material. It's amazing that her crush, Josh, doesn't think she's totally nuts.

Now Madison has learned that she's the dark timekeeper, in charge of angels who follow the murky guidelines of fate. Never one to abide by the rules, she decides it's time for a major change to the system. With the help of some unlikely allies, Madison forms a rogue group of reapers who definitely don't adhere to the rules of Heaven.

But as she grapples with the terrifying new skills that come with being a timekeeper, Madison realizes she may not be prepared for what lies ahead—unless she gets some seriously divine intervention.

My Two Cents:

I'd rather not beat around the bush with this one. It was such a thin book but it took me FOREVER to finish. I found myself struggling to pay attention and forcing myself to continue on. In the first book in this series Once Dead Twice Shy I was completely enthralled the whole time. Not only was there a full plot, but there were also sub plots that kept the story going. I honesty can not say the same thing for this one. Even the main character Madison, was watered down this time around. She wasn't as funny and charismatic as she was in the first one.

I was pretty disappointed. The whole gist of it was that Madison was trying to prove that there's no such thing as fate. She figured that even though someone could be on the wrong path, if they knew that they could possibly die from it, they might change their attitude. The whole book was spent trying to convince the seraphs of this. I wish there were more examples of her trying this theory out. As far as the romance aspect, it was pretty much nonexistent. Madison and her crush Josh had something special in Book One but it was ice cold this round. We hardly heard anything from him at all. He may have had one line in the whole book if that. Was it badly written? Nope. It just needed more going on to keep us readers interested. It made the whole fate argument seem so drawn out being that that was all it was about.

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