Angels Walking by Karen Kingsbury

Title: Angels Walking
Author: Karen Kingsbury

Read by: Kirby Heyborne and January Lavoy
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 12 hours (9 CDs)
Source: Simon & Schuster Audio Review Copy – Thank-you!

Angels Walking is the first in a new series of books by Karen Kingsbury.  In heaven, angels have become concerned that an important child will not be born unless Tyler Ames and his only love Sami Dawson are put back on the path to each other.  Two angels are sent to earth to help to clear their path.  Tyler Ames was an all-star little league baseball player.  He had everything going for him, but chose to go straight to the minor leagues instead of college leaving behind his family and love Sami Dawson.  A series of bad choices has estranged Tyler from both his family and Sami. After unfortunate accident, Tyler is left with nothing and with the help of angels he is able to find a new job as maintenance man at a nursing home.  There he meets and befriends a wonderful old woman, Virginia Hutcheson.  Meanwhile Sami has a successful career and powerful perfect boyfriend, but finds that something is missing in her life. Will they both be able to find what they need in life and each other?

I’ll admit that I was turned off by the beginning of this book.  I thought the intro with the angels was very pretentious and heavy handed.  The way the angels described the important child was that he was almost the Christ child, which actually offended me.   Luckily I stuck with it as ironically once the story returned to earth and the angels only made random appearances to put our protagonist on the right path, it became a much stronger story.  I really enjoyed Tyler and Sami’s journey.  I was particularly touched with Tyler’s relationship with Virginia.  It was wonderful.

The audiobook had two narrators, Kirby Heyborne for the chapters told from Tyler’s point of view, and January Lavoy for the chapters told from Sami’s point of view.  I liked this type of narration and thought they did a wonderful job.

Overall, a good story about how life doesn’t always go as one expects, but that love and relationships are what matters.