Waterslain Angels is a YA book about two children who decide to find the fourteen hand-carved angels that were taken from the village church and hidden during reformation days, gradually over time their hiding place was forgotten. Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to like this book, I just couldn’t warm up to it. Supposedly a straight forward mystery, but actually the children stumbled around clueless, mostly going by messages that came to them in dreams. To put suspense into the story, they were not the only ones looking for the angels, a church handyman was also eager to find them and make a profit from these priceless antiques.

Even looking at this book as children’s fiction did not make me inclined to give it a higher rating. I found the writing very choppy and abrupt and the plot was executed in a strange and unbelievable fashion. The ending came quickly, when all of a sudden one of the children showed a flash of genius and determined where the angels were hidden. I did find the marshy setting of Norfolk interesting and I wished there was more information about that in the story. All in all, I just wasn’t very impressed with Waterslain Angels. ( )