Penryn is desperate to get Paige back, and feels that her only hope is to help the downed angel and get him to take her to wherever the angels would have taken Paige. On the way out, one of the group grabs Paige and takes her with him. The larger group slices off the wings of the angel being attacked, and they leave him to die. While trying to get her family to a safer place, Penryn encounters a group of angels fighting each other, with five against one. In “The World After” as Penryn calls it, rival gangs and apocalypse cults control goods and services, and the streets are dangerous, especially for the occasional angel who gets caught there and attacked for body parts that can be sold or traded. The books are narrated by Penryn Young, 17, who may have been a typical California girl in “The World Before,” but who now is trying to ensure the survival of her remaining family – seven-year-old Paige, who is a paraplegic, and their paranoid-schizophrenic mother. (Eventually we find out why that happened.) A whole slew of angels has come to Earth and triggered an apocalypse.

Instead of the bizarre trope often used in YA books that has an angel or two coming to Earth and going to high school, this one begins quite differently. Indeed, it was entertaining enough that I avidly raced through all three books. Like many other readers, I felt burned out by the onslaught of copycat young adult dystopias, fantasies, and paranormal romances, but I heard this series was exceptionally good, so I decided to plunge back into the genre.

The angelfall trilogy