The Deal

The Fallen Angel Series, Book I

By: S C Cunningham

Narrated by: Susan Knight

Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's Summary

Wouldn't it be nice to have hot, funny, feisty, rule-breaking angels protecting and fighting your corner? Keeping an eye on those who slip through law enforcement's fingers? 

Well here you go...the Fallen. You're welcome!

At the age of four, Amy Fox was taken.... She survived....

A week later, another little girl was taken.... She didn't.

Angry, Amy made a deal with the heavens.

Decades later her lifeless body was found beneath a London commuter train and she became an angel. But for how long? Lusting after her partner, competing with hell warlords, avenging personal scores, and dishing out tough karma on evil exes, crime gangs, traffickers, drug dealers, rapists, abusers, trophy hunters, trolls, and serial killers, all without her units authorization, will have her thrown below ground. Running with a world network of fallen angels, Amy has never worked so hard in her entire earthly life. She has to wonder if making a deal was a mistake.

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©2017 S C Cunningham (P)2020 S C Cunningham

Okay

Title: The Deal
Author: S.C. Cunningham
Format: Audio
Narrator: Susan Knight
Standalone: Yes - but sets up for more
Part of a Series: The Fallen Angel #1
POV: Lots
Steam Level: Some
3/5

In theory, The Deal is a fun book. Guardian Angels who a little devious and have their own demons that they fight. Suspenseful and witty with humor throughout it should be quite fun. However, I found myself bored. I figured out some of the big reveals but also I wasn't really invested enough to be shocked, or even care. I don't think I'll be continuing with this series.

I received this audiobook for free from Audiobook Obsession. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Vigilante Angels!

I was granted complimentary Audible access to The Deal by C.S. Cunningham as part of my participation in the blog tour for this title through Rachel’s Random Resources. Thank you to all involved! This has not swayed my opinion; my thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

The Deal introduces us to “fallen angel” Amy and her newfound coworkers. In this version of our modern world, people who make deals with their god before death that they will help deal justice if they can be permitted to hang around on earth and make a difference in the world after death. Amy survived childhood sexual abuse and has a vendetta again child abusers in particular, and her zeal for executing her own flavour of justice is getting her in trouble with the higher ups in her unit of vigilante angels.

I absolutely love the premise behind this book and series! The way this book was pitched to me reminded me of Tad Williams’ The Dirty Streets of Heaven, but with a romantic element. Vigilante angels? Heck yes, give me all of it!

The reasons this book gets 3 stars out of 5 for the story itself are structural editing issues and the strong emphasis I need to put on content warnings.

Content warnings: Graphic description of sexual acts (both with and without consent), graphic violence, murder, exploration of the phycological trauma created by childhood sexual abuse. If you have trauma relating to these issues and are easily triggered by reading this type of content, this book is NOT for you! This book may also be emotionally distressing to parents of young children.

As for structural editing issues, this book has a lot of scenes that are repetitive. Characters relay the same information to multiple other characters separately and we the reader (listener) have to hear it blow for blow again. Scene-setting conversations (such as Amy’s phone conversation in the very beginning as she unknowingly walks to her death) last a little too long. Jumping between past and present while also jumping between point of view characters so frequently gets quite disorienting at times, and given that this is now an audiobook and the reader isn’t visually processing the chapter headers, it became more apparently that there isn’t enough distinctive character voices written into the narrative to help the readers keep it all straight.

Those issues aside, this is a very entertaining book with a lot of action, and I have high hopes for the rest of the series.

In terms of narration, I would give the performance 4 out of 5 stars. Generally speaking, Susan Knight’s voice is very pleasant to listen to and I would absolutely look for more books narrated by her. I do wish she was more able to distinguish between POV character voices. Part of that is on the material she was working with, but I didn’t detect any attempt to adopt a different pitch or manner of speaking to distinguish one character from another. I’d also like to comment briefly on pronunciation. My first note in this category is that whenever the word “pillow” comes up the narrator says “pellow,” and that’s a personal pet peeve of mine. If that were the only thing I noticed I wouldn’t have mentioned it. Much more distracting was that every time the text said “ethereal” the narrator said “erethral” which is very close to “urethral.” Personally, if I were the author or anyone else involved in approving the narration files, I would have asked for those lines to be re-recorded. (And I really hope I’m not putting my foot in my mouth and this is a Cumberbatch “pengwing” type issue where that honestly was the best take after many corrections.)

Story: 3
Performance: 4
Overall: 3 – 3.5

I would recommend this book to fans of fantasy and of paranormal romance as long as they are fine with the above mentioned major content warnings.

A cool and fun ride

This one I read for a tour i'm participating in.

And wao, don't regret choosing this one, it was so cool and interesting from beginning to end.

The plot was pretty interesting and fresh on my opinion, the idea of angel vigilantes is pretty fun and cool, would love to do something like that sounds awesome.

I like how the romance comes very organic through the situation and all the setting and how it sits and give you a pleasant feeling there.

The twists were so unexpected or me I was like what? are you serious, and it kept me super entertained and on edge so totally recommended if you want something interesting and fun to listen to.

there was nothing complicated about this one...

My expectations were not high when I went into listening to this book. I was looking for some mindless entertainment. Nothing earth shattering or world changing. I was at most anticipating a laugh or two. Okay maybe a bit more, but what I got changed a lot of things. This was deep, dark, and a bit disturbing.

I can usually listen to my books at a good clip (2.5 or 3 times the speed). With this one I had to slow it down and not because it was so exacting to my romance standards. No, I had to slow it down because I was almost confused on what I was hearing. The depth of details of graphic wrongs people commit on their fellow humans. The details and complexity of the evil that plagues this world. I thing instead of laughing much I cried more. This one hurt me but kept me entertained and engaged. There was good mixed in with the evil the world choses to not see way too often.

Amy was for me the Angel of the underdog, the wronged, the forgotten, the lost. This was most certainly a darker side of PNR than I am use to. There was nothing complicated about this one, not true. This was raw, real, and a bit startling. I want to know what is next.

Susan Knight brought Amy right off the pages. She sounded good in each of the three speeds that I used during this story. She allowed for me to make a deeper connection to the darkness that was occurring with Amy, her mission, and her past.