Stacia in Progress

Indeed, an archangel trapped face down in the water would surely drown.During the 78% of the book which followed the above sentence, I kept having mental images flash through my head of a poor angel stuck in the water, flailing his wings and trying to get out. Maybe these angels should get one of those life alert necklaces, the ones with the slogan : Help, I've fallen and I can't get up! Those things save lives, you know.Oh wait, I forgot. They can't rely on help from humans because humans are poaching them. Wow, it's a bad time to be an angel. It's always sort of different when you stumble across paranormal books in which us idiot humans have some sort of knowledge about things outside of our own bubble. I'm not sure if I ever fully got a handle on who exactly knows about the angels and demons. I might have missed that tidbit. From what I gather, there is at least a big enough portion of the population who has this knowledge though. Can I talk about the cover before continuing on with my book commentary? Because I don't think I'm a fan of the newer cover version.Let's compare :[bc:Out in Blue|11799123|Out in Blue (Return to Sanctuary, #1)|Sarah Gilman|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1358798481s/11799123.jpg|16752074] vs. [bc:Out in Blue|15103469|Out in Blue (Return to Sanctuary, #1)|Sarah Gilman|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1358798448s/15103469.jpg|16752074]I get that the half-naked man is sort of the norm for romance-type books, but I liked the pretty little floating feather. So it's not really an angel-wing type of feather, but I liked it because that pic looks better than nakey-man deformed torso. Maybe that's just me though. Truth be told, the second cover leads you to believe that this book is way more sexy than it actually is. However, I thought the love story was sweet. Everything seemed a little too rushed, but maybe that was for the purpose of fitting in more action at the end. There were still some note-worthy moments on the journey though."But if I kiss you once, I won't be able to stop." He paused. "I'd be damning you to an unspeakable hell if I acted on my desires."She was good for him, that much was clear. He wasn't good for her."I shouldn't mean anything to you, Gin.""But you do." She stepped forward."Then you are a very brave, foolish woman."PNR vs. UF - what is this book? It looks like the book is classified as PNR. Since I can't see how book 2 is going to go (new couple, same couple, etc.), I can only go off how the book reads - and it reads more UF than PNR to me. There are a couple of brief sex scenes but the detail is fast...it's not quite fade to black, but there's definitely a get in, get out, type of deal.The story starts off with action - right from the start a woman is put in the path of an angel in trouble and she helps rescue him and nurses him back to health. I love when a book grabs hold of you and gets you excited from the get-go.There was a good mix of action and romance, and the book ended with a great tah-dah, setting things up for future adventures.The writing was impressive. Nothing about Out in Blue read small pub to me. I am surprised that I hadn't heard of this book before I was approved for the re-release galley (it was originally published a while back) because it reads very much like a big pub book - there was something about Out in Blue which reminded me of the first Guild Hunter book. In fact, I feel sort of guilty for only giving out 3 stars, when I couldn't really find anything wrong. All I can say is that I wasn't hooked. Everything was good, but nothing stood out. So I'm going with my decent but not special rating. Overall, this was a good first effort - better than a lot of the first-in-series books for popular UF/PNR, even. I'll keep a look out for book two. From the way the foundation was laid, I think there's some great potential for good things to come.