DNF at 40%.

I was really excited to get started on reading this book, because the blurb looked very promising, containing a lot of elements I would normally enjoy. However, this book just wasn’t for me.
I really struggled with the writing style and the main character being way too snarky for me (all her inner dialogue was also too much for me to handle). These elements kept me from getting sucked into the story. I had to force myself to keep on reading. On the other hand, the academy still looks like an interesting place, and certain characters such as Lorcan and Godric were the main reason I tried to push through this book (but these positive elements just didn’t outweigh the less positive ones). So I can definitely see why other people enjoy this book, it just wasn’t for me.

Thank you NetGalley and Seventh Wonder Press for sending this book for review
consideration. All opinions are my own.

This book had it all, Angel and Demon, academia storytellings, friendship, enemies to lovers, trials, magic etc.
The world building was superb, characters perfect and the ending left me wanting more.
I need the next instalment ASAP.

Firstly, I’d like to say how much I adore this cover! It’s so lovely and I couldn’t stop staring at it while reading the book.

Secondly—this book! I was nervous because this has been an anticipated read of mine but I had no reason to be. I enjoyed the main characters and their relationships. Olivia does such a beautiful job curating these endearing and wonderful characters with seemingly real personalities and ambitions. I absolutely busted out laughing so many times! This book was so fun, witty and honest!

Seeing this book compared to Crescent City and Zodiac Academy, I was immediately intrigued. Unfortunately, it was not nearly as emotional as the former nor as entertaining as the latter.

I felt like very little happened in an otherwise long book - half the time we were stuck inside the main character's head and were forced to listen to her inner monologue for multiple pages, even in scenes that were supposed to be fast-paced and high stakes. At least 150 pages could've been edited out, the story would've stayed the same, and it probably would've kept my attention more. The pacing was weird, the first 40% of the story was incredibly slow and spanned over only a day basically, then when it finally got more interesting, and we arrived to the academy, we jumped weeks into the future and missed out on all the magical school aspect that I was looking forward to.

Characters besides our heroine and her love interest felt very one-dimensional, especially the best friend, who our main character spent half the book worrying about even though her only personality trait was being nice to everyone.

I think I would've enjoyed this a lot more had it been dual POV; Godric's one chapter in the end was more interesting than a lot of Wen's chapters combined. As it turns out, there's such a thing as a too snarky main character. Being witty should not come at the expense of me wondering how the hell this girl is still alive when she's determined to be bratty to everyone and constantly speak her every thought without even being aware of it.

Very interesting world!

A little bit complicated at the beginning! A prologue of the Apocalypses and all the supernatural in existence might have helped!

About the story, I really liked it. Wen is a super strong human ( who might be something else) I loved how she is so loyal and even when she sometimes do bad things. Wen has her moral compass and believes and behaves according to it.

In the romance part Wen and Godric are in the enemies to lovers trope and in a very slow burn cathegory! Looking forward to sew how their relationship developes.

Anxiously awaiting book 2!

I didn't know what to think when I started this book. I will say I very much enjoyed it. The relationship between the main character and her friend is sweet.
The MCs attitude towards everyone else had me laughing. All around good read.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC

First off I want to say this book has a lot of potential.
However the execution unfortunately lacks quite a bit.

The writing:
It took roughly until page 130 for things to actually happen despite the world having been explained within the first 30 or so pages and I got bored again around page 300. Getting through those was a task in itself but it did actually get better… for a bit. The book is 50% snarky inner monologue by the MC Wen and 50% conversation that most of the time is meant to be funny banter (but often just feels annoying and childish).

The book definitely needs another round of editing as there were some blatant mistakes in the writing however I can ignore that as shit just happens.

I think my biggest and main concern with the writing was that most of the time we don’t actually SEE things happen we just get told that they did happen, in retrospect. E.g. the whole looking up things in the library. We weren’t there for that as the readers no we just got told by Wen in another one of her endless inner monologue in some sort of side note. All we really see live is her banter with Godric, insulting others and obsessing over Sarah. And all of that put together just starts to make it all feel very boring despite it being a really good story. There were so many good opportunities to make us suffer with the character and watch them grow (for example Wens endless workout sessions) but all we got was like one maybe two sessions and then a “we finished the trial is tomorrow” and in that missed out on all the actual character development.

This brings us to the characters:

Wen is a highly sarcastic and distrusting MC she feels a lot like the two main characters from Zodiac academy or the MC from the fever series. Except that she feels a lot more annoying. There is such a thing as too much snark and too much banter. I get that it’s her way of protecting herself but at least in her inner monologues she could be a bit more vulnerable and offer the reader some insight as to why she is how she is.
Also it felt ew times she wasn’t insulting anyone or bantering with Godric all the did was ask questions, so so many questions yet somehow she managed to always miss the most important ones?
You would think someone with a background like her knew how to get information a little better.

As for the other characters I genuinely enjoyed Godric he seems to have some depth and Opi would love to see how he grows throughout the series.

Sarah just annoyed me with all her perfect lovable innocence. There was nothing to her she just felt like a means for developing plot.

The other side characters were genuinely enjoyable and all had something unique to them. So the author definitely knows how to write characters, she just needs to be carful not to fall into stereotypes and tropes.

Lastly as for the overall story and world building:

I really loved the idea of the book and it had some solid world building until the author seemed to want too much at the same time. But over all it is still a really good story that just needs to have its pacing fleshed out a bit more as at times nothing happened and then everything happened.
I loved the setting and would have enjoyed actually hearing more about the academy rather than just going straight to the trials. There was not one class Wen went to with us readers. All we got to see was her dorm some random walks across campus and one or two lunch times.
It kinda is amazing how almost 500 pages were filled with so much…nothing?

To sum it up, the story potential is 100% there and it has some potentially really great characters but the book is poorly executed and needs another go through editing.
I do hope to see more from the author though as I feel like there is a lot of talent.

Celestial Academy: Essence is the first in a series of five books. Taking place after the apocalypse, angels and demons have both made Earth their home, permanently interfering with the lives of humans. The story follows Wen, who has been enslaved by a demon. As a slave, she doesn't make much money, so she turns to selling drugs on the side for extra cash. Specifically, Wen sells Angelescence, a drug that only she can make that becomes so popular she struggles to keep up with demand. Her luck runs out, however, as she's caught during a drug deal-staged-stakeout, changing Wen's life forever in an instant. She get conscripted to Celestial Academy with her captor, Godric, as her mentor because she has the impossible ability of harvesting Angel Essence. Her time at the Academy and with Godric make Wen realize that she's far more than a regular human being, just as the world around her seems to be returning to chaos. The impending war is the least of their worries, however, as Godric begins to understand Wen's true power, possibly making her the most dangerous thing on the planet.

I loved this book. I am so glad that I got the chance to read this arc. I love the idea that Wen, who is from the lowest, most disregarded portion of the population, is potentially the most deadly thing on the planet. She is a strong-willed woman who has intense instincts to protect those she loves and cares about. The reason she gets into selling drugs is to save up enough money to buy herself and her best friend, Sarah, out of slavery. The fact that she's then caught by the most powerful nephilim feels almost fated. I think it's funny that Godric wants nothing to do with her though and even has a dramatic moment when he finds out Wen is being assigned to him. I love the relationship the two of them end up building, and I'm excited to see where it goes in the next book.

I also really enjoy the idea of Celestial Academy and how the world takes place after the apocalypse. I can only imagine what living in a world like that would be like, so I'm definitely not envious of Wen. The way that Olivia Pharos paints a picture of what things and people look like and how they all interact with one another definitely helped me visualize what this world looked like. While I don't want to be conscripted there, I think it'd be cool to see what Celestial Academy looked like in person.

I'm excited for the next book to come out, which I've already preordered. I'm 100% invested in this series and I feel incredibly honored to have read the beginning of it.

Unfortunately, this book fell flat for me. I found it really hard to get into in the beginning. I would say about 40% through, it started picking up, but it was hard for me to finish.

I really did not like the main character, Wen. I felt her banter and name calling just came off as immature. It was hard to connect with her because there was never any serious conversation with any other characters. Literally every interaction she had involved immature come backs.

I appreciate the ARC from NetGalley.

This one just wasn’t for me. I got through it but I was struggling.

Still grateful to the author and publisher for giving me the chance to read this though. Putting out a book is hard work and props to anyone who can

What i love in this book was the bits of humor. I like the characters, the post-apocaliptic world who author build.
Quotes: "It was news to me. I don't know angels had dicks." 😂😂😂

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for a review!
Celestial Academy is pitched as a mash-up between Zodiac Academy and Crescent City which is what drew me in. In this novel, you get the bully romance and academy setting from Zodiac Academy and the all-powerful angels and the diverse world from Crescent City. However, I feel this is not a rip-off of those stories and goes in a fun direction. Our main character Wen is a demon slave who is selling the drug Angelsense to make enough money to buy out her and her best friend's slave contract. Angelsense is highly sought after and Wen seems to be the only one not affected by it. One night she is attempting a deal when she is caught by an angel. Godric literally drags her (with an invisible leash!) through many trials until the Archangels decide to send her off to Celestial Academy. The goal is to figure out exactly what is different about Wen but we still do not learn the full extent even by the end of the book. The romance is what kept me going through this book. The tension! I wanted to learn more about Godric and see the characters together. I felt like the bully romance was done well where we are not completely repulsed by Godric. I absolutely loved Wen's humor. All of her nicknames for Godric were so funny especially Godawful. Her nicknames for everyone were fun and she always has replies to any insult even in the worst moments. Wen uses humor to get through situations but she is just masking her hurt and past suffering. Overall I really enjoyed this one and am looking forward to the next book. I would have loved to see Godric's POV, especially with that epilogue chapter in this POV. I am quite curious to see where this goes after what happened in the trials and what happens with Wen's powers. Definitely recommend!

I have to say, by the end, I was very invested with what’s in store for our main characters!

Like a lot of fantasy, world building takes a predominant role in the first half of the book so for me the story didn’t really start moving until about 2/3 of the way in.

The world building is good, I love the post apocalyptic world that’s ruined for humans by heaven and hell still being involved. We met a lot of unique character and I appreciate the creativity that went into writing these entities! I also like the grim reality of Wen and Sarah’s life as demon bond that we’re shown prior to Celestial Academy. Once at the academy, I expected the story to pick up a bit more but there was still a LOT of new information. It would of been a bit more fluid with more story and less background.

Overall, I enjoyed the story but wasn’t fully invested until about 70% in. There was just a lot of information before the plot picked up and things started to click into place.

Thank you to NetGalley and Seventh Wonder Press for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

I went into this with very few expectations, drawn in by the promise that anyone who enjoyed Zodiac Academy would enjoy this, and it's true, I did enjoy it, but it holds it's own against Zodiac, in my opinion. Which is big for me to say, since I absolutely love Zodiac Academy.

Wen was such a fun heroine to be inside the mind of. I loved the nicknames she made up for everyone around her and her insults had me laughing throughout the entire book.

There is little to no obvious romance in this, but delightful tension that builds throughout, which I really didn't mind one bit.

This story did remind me of Zodiac, only in the sense both had a 'magical' academy, but it also kind of gave me dystopian vibes and reminded me a little of Percy Jackson, too, but instead of the greek gods, we got the archangels and the archdemons.

The relationship between Wen and Godric is the closest to an actual enemies to lovers I've read since Zodiac Academy, incidentally. I hate nothing more than something being advertised as that when the two main characters have no real source of conflict and are friends within the first couple of chapters. That didn't happen here. The development of their relationship drew me in and I can't wait for it to develop throughout the books.

I also can't wait for the development of the other characters, especially the Unita.

There were a couple of issues throughout the book with grammar and spelling, but those were easy to overlook. They did knock a star off, though. A good editor should have caught these before the books release, but hopefully this will improve as the series goes on and gains more traction.

I can't wait to jump into book 2, and thankfully, it doesn't look like the wait for it will be long!

As the type of book I would typically hate the plotline was amazing however, the delivery could do with a bit more polishing.

THE STORYLINE:
Wen is taken from her home and her best friend (Sarah) in L.A. Both girls are enslaved by demons and Wen is the only person who can create Angelescence (I think that's how its spelled) She's then tracked down by Godrick, an all-powerful half angel half human who kidnaps her in a van. Wen is then whisked into the world of the angels which I fell in love with. She then finds out that her power is unusual and no one knows it's extent or what exactly she is. Those two factors were the only thing keeping me going.

WEN (MC):
Wen was abused as a child and was enslaved to a demon until the age of around 20. As a 20-year-old she has an immature sense of humor and acts like a 14-year-old. I found most of her witty comments fell flat and the name-calling started to get on my nerves. For someone who was abused this is somewhat understandable but she seemed to be immune to mental trauma which I feel could've added a layer of depth to the story.

GODRIC:
An all-powerful half-human half-archangel, this is your morally grey hunk who the MC hates then loves then hates then cannot live without.

Overall, the writing style needed another run-through as it was fairly disjointed. I just hated the MC, I found her to be quite immature for her age which began to get on my nerves. Other than that the world was amazing and the plot was well done, this definitely has a lot of potential.

Recommend for ages 15+ who are wanting to explore a rich new world filled to the brim with angels and demons who are looking for a well-written plot to keep them on their toes with a healthy dose of enemies-to-lovers.

*I received a free copy of the text in exchange for an honest review*

This book was a quick and enjoyable read with a lot of world building and incredible characters. I found myself loosing track of time while reading this and did finish it in one sitting.

I really wanted to love this one, as I was stoked to see comparisons to Crescent City and Zodiac Academy. I’m fans of those series and while a part of me feels that even those series are not perfect, both have a unique sort of charm that I was looking forward to discovering through Celestial Academy.

Unfortunately this book was not for me, the 40% I did read felt like an uphill trudge the whole time. In my opinion this novel was a bit derivative and perhaps took itself a bit too seriously. I do think this author’s prose has lots of promise and I will maybe check out their other works to see if it was just the premise of this one that wasn’t for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Seventh Wonder Press for the ARC

Frankly what caught my attention in the first place was the cover, but I'm blown away by the storyline of Celestial Academy!

It's an action packed Urban Fantasy with a blend of Greek Mythology and supernatural vibes, it's the perfect series for fans of Crescent City and Zodiac Academy!

I admire Wen's strength and determination, although there might be times where she's a damsel in distress but she never back down. Although there's a few cringey moments, the author did created an astonishing world building along with fun+well developed characters.
Plus the slow burn+ enemies to lovers trope are killing me! Looking forward to read the sequel.

Thank you Netgalley for providing an Ecopy of Celestial Academy!

I was gripped early, wasn't sure what to expect but I was engrossed and read it solid every chance I got for 3 days. Then I was annoyed that I'd finished it too quick!
It's so detailed, but not useless detail, it's rich detail that gives the tale texture and makes you want to know more as you get to know and care about the characters.
Upon finishing I immediately wanted to grab the next book in the series and carry on. I'm sitting on the edge of my seat needing more.
Absolutely mesmerising storytelling

Celestial Academy: Essence is an enemies-to-lovers slow burn following Wen White as she is arrested by angels and forced to attend Celestial Academy as the angels try to find out what exactly she is. Her power is unprecedented and incredibly dangerous, for angels, demons, and the entire universe.
I completely adored this book. It was outstanding and beautifully written. Every character had substance, good and bad traits, and nothing felt unnecessary. Wen is always asking questions, she can't seem to stop herself because no one tells her anything. Sometimes I wanted to be annoyed by all the questions, but I was also asking the same things, so I felt incredibly connected to Wen and her character.
I've seen this book be compared to Zodiac Academy and ACOTAR, and I've never read those books. However, my favorite book series is The Mortal Instruments, and this book reminded me of them in the best possible way. If you enjoyed those books as a teen, then Celestial Academy is the perfect next step in your reading journey! It's a little spicy, there's so much pining and tension you could cut it with a knife, and the story itself is easily consumed and digested. Godric and Wen are the perfect enemies-to-lovers couple, they embody everything I love about that trope, and I can't wait to see how their relationship progresses in the next books. If you like fantasy, slow burns, a sort of "chosen one" heroine, and sometimes hilarious dialogue, this is the book for you!