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Fallen by Lauren Kate
The Blurb On The Back:
Daniel’s gaze caught hers, and her breath caught in her throat. She recognised him from somewhere. But she would have remembered meeting someone like him. She would have remembered feeling as absolutely shaken up as she did right now.
But what do you do when the person you’ve spent your whole life looking for keeps slipping out of your grasp? What if the person you are meant to be with can never be yours?
Dangerously addictive and darkly romantic, Fallen is the ultimate gothic love story love story – a page-turning thriller about fallen angels.
Ever since she was a child, Luce has been followed by shadows but no one believes her and her worried parents have sent her to countless psychologists, convinced that she has some kind of mental illness. Luce learns to lie about what she sees and her life takes a turn for a better when she wins an academic scholarship to a prestigious East Coast boarding school, but her first date ends in tragedy, death and Luce suffering amnesia.
Required to attend Sword and Cross (a corrective school), all Luce wants to do is live quietly and see out her sentence. That all changes when she meets fellow newcomer Daniel, a good looking boy who she’s sure she’s met before but who treats her with contempt. Meanwhile she’s flattered by attention from the devilishly handsome Cam and forms friendships with the wild Arriane and studious Penn. However as Luce’s obsession with Daniel grows, she finds herself discovering secrets about her past that tie her to a war between angels – a war that she and Daniel are at the heart of.
This is another love story about two good looking teenagers who shouldn’t be together because he’s an angel and each time they’ve found each other in their past lives, Luce to suffer a fiery death the moment they kiss. Daniel remembers each and every past life but Luce does not and the cycle keeps repeating. Now though something has changed and Luce and Daniel’s future is fluid for the first time.
Luce spends the book being confused and dim. There’s a laugh-out-loud moment where she talks about her 4.0 GPA given that she’s shown no academic ability at all during the book. Daniel is sensitive and enigmatic but only because he never explains anything (something that Luce thankfully calls him on). The story unfolds slowly – at times far too slowly in that it’s easy for the reader to guess what is going to happen. The only real shock comes at the end with a character death, but otherwise the heroes and villains are self-explanatory.
The hook is original, there is a credible explanation for the character’s mutual obsession and Kate maintains a Gothic vibe through the text. My biggest complaint is that the back story is deliberately held back so that future shocks can be revealed in future books and I wasn’t sure that I cared enough about Luce and Daniel to want to find out more.
The Verdict:
Teens looking for the next paranormal romance could do worse than this novel (not least because the characters are no different to those typically found in this genre). However, the refusal to explain critical parts of the backstory is frustrating and raises the question as to whether there is enough there to sustain the series.
But what do you do when the person you’ve spent your whole life looking for keeps slipping out of your grasp? What if the person you are meant to be with can never be yours?
Dangerously addictive and darkly romantic, Fallen is the ultimate gothic love story love story – a page-turning thriller about fallen angels.
Ever since she was a child, Luce has been followed by shadows but no one believes her and her worried parents have sent her to countless psychologists, convinced that she has some kind of mental illness. Luce learns to lie about what she sees and her life takes a turn for a better when she wins an academic scholarship to a prestigious East Coast boarding school, but her first date ends in tragedy, death and Luce suffering amnesia.
Required to attend Sword and Cross (a corrective school), all Luce wants to do is live quietly and see out her sentence. That all changes when she meets fellow newcomer Daniel, a good looking boy who she’s sure she’s met before but who treats her with contempt. Meanwhile she’s flattered by attention from the devilishly handsome Cam and forms friendships with the wild Arriane and studious Penn. However as Luce’s obsession with Daniel grows, she finds herself discovering secrets about her past that tie her to a war between angels – a war that she and Daniel are at the heart of.
This is another love story about two good looking teenagers who shouldn’t be together because he’s an angel and each time they’ve found each other in their past lives, Luce to suffer a fiery death the moment they kiss. Daniel remembers each and every past life but Luce does not and the cycle keeps repeating. Now though something has changed and Luce and Daniel’s future is fluid for the first time.
Luce spends the book being confused and dim. There’s a laugh-out-loud moment where she talks about her 4.0 GPA given that she’s shown no academic ability at all during the book. Daniel is sensitive and enigmatic but only because he never explains anything (something that Luce thankfully calls him on). The story unfolds slowly – at times far too slowly in that it’s easy for the reader to guess what is going to happen. The only real shock comes at the end with a character death, but otherwise the heroes and villains are self-explanatory.
The hook is original, there is a credible explanation for the character’s mutual obsession and Kate maintains a Gothic vibe through the text. My biggest complaint is that the back story is deliberately held back so that future shocks can be revealed in future books and I wasn’t sure that I cared enough about Luce and Daniel to want to find out more.
The Verdict:
Teens looking for the next paranormal romance could do worse than this novel (not least because the characters are no different to those typically found in this genre). However, the refusal to explain critical parts of the backstory is frustrating and raises the question as to whether there is enough there to sustain the series.