Review: Hallowed (Unearthly #2)

Hallowed, Book 2 in the Unearthly Trilogy by Cynthia Hand

Published By: Harper Collins
Publication Date: January 17, 2012
Date Read: June 25, 2026
Genre: YA – Paranormal Romance
Source: Bought
Format: Paperback
Pages: 416

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For months part-angel Clara Gardner trained to face the raging forest fire from her visions and rescue the alluring and mysterious Christian Prescott from the blaze. But nothing could prepare her for the fateful decisions she would be forced to make that day, or the startling revelation that her purpose—the task she was put on earth to accomplish—is not as straightforward as she thought.

Now, torn between her increasingly complicated feelings for Christian and her love for her boyfriend, Tucker, Clara struggles to make sense of what she was supposed to do the day of the fire. And, as she is drawn further into the world of part angels and the growing conflict between White Wings and Black Wings, Clara learns of the terrifying new reality that she must Someone close to her will die in a matter of months. With her future uncertain, the only thing Clara knows for sure is that the fire was just the beginning.

After finishing Unearthly, I was so excited to dive into the second book and see what happened next. I really enjoyed the first book in the series, mainly due to how different it felt from other YA paranormal romance books of this era. I couldn’t wait to see whether this continued in the rest of the series. Sadly, this one did not quite live up to my expectations. I had been hoping for more unique elements to this book, but as many of the series of its time, this one definitely suffered from second book syndrome for me.

Hallowed picks up where Unearthly left of. With Clara having ignored her divine purpose to save her love instead but when she starts to have more visions, Clara realises her purpose is not over, and where will that leave her and Tucker. Honestly, I did enjoy the idea that she still has a purpose, despite the fact that she disobeyed. I found this a really interesting plot point. Where my disappointment came in this book was the characterisation and the pacing of the book.

The pacing was so ridiculously slow. Clara has a vision of something that is going to happen, we know early on exactly who is involved in the vision and how it is going to happen. Yet it doesn’t happen until around the 75% mark. So I felt like the majority of the book, nothing was happening other than us just waiting and waiting and waiting. I’ll be honest, I got bored. I ended up skim reading a bit in a bid to get to the point where something was going to happen.

My opinion of Clara really fell in this book. She went from such a strong character in book 1, to just being whiny in book 2. She treat everyone horribly. There were some of her best friends that were not mentioned until the very end. She just reverted to everything I dislike in a YA character in this one, which definitely affected my enjoyment.

I am going to continue the series, and finish the trilogy. Especially because the ending was very good, and things definitely kicked up a notch. I really hope this was just a case of second book syndrome and the third book will save it.