ANGEL

Marrow, arm-candy wife to rapper/actor Ice-T, and co-author Hayden, who teamed up with presidential daughter Susan Ford on her novel, ask readers to suspend their belief in what’s real and what’s not in this fantasy/romance.

Angela Sands is the “Angel of the Hudson.” She received her nickname after surviving a harrowing plane crash into the Hudson River that killed everyone aboard but her and a tiny baby. After rescuing the infant, Angela herself needs help getting to dry land and finds it in the guise of reporter Dante Kearns, who is shooting a story on a nearby ferry. Dante jumps into the water to save Angela, and the two begin a relationship that starts as reporter/subject but ends up evolving into something much more interesting. Angela has a perplexing problem: She can’t remember anything about her past. She also has some disturbing talents: With the exception of Dante, she “hears” men’s thoughts; she involuntarily devolves into their ideal woman; and she has both super strength and a voracious sexual appetite. After the plane crash, airline executives dump Angela into a mental-health facility, where she starts remembering things about a former life, even as she thwarts a rape plot by two workers. After leaving, she reestablishes her friendship with Dante, and the two begin to work through her issues, which include homelessness, unemployment and murky memories of the recent murder of a wealthy socialite. Together, Marrow and Hayden have constructed a universe in which evil corporations get away with abusing victims and no one finds a woman who can change shape at will more than a passing oddity. Rather than a cohesive tale that propels the fanciful story along in a logical sequence, this is a collection of loosely strung-together situations that allow the protagonist to show her dark side. An inconsistent and unsatisfying narrative that offers neither compelling characterization nor believable situations. The upshot: A pointless plot delivered in humdrum prose.