‘Some angels are destined to fall.
Instant. Intense. Weirdly familiar…The moment Luce looks at Daniel she knows she has never felt like this before. Except she can’t shake the feeling that she has…and with him – a boy she doesn’t remember ever setting eyes on.
Will her attempt to find out why enlighten her – or destroy her?’
Hmm. It took me a long time to finally pick this book up to read. The cover is gorgeous, atmospheric, and haunting, but looked a little… melodramatic, which just put me off. After reading Fallen I have to say I think my initial misgivings were justified. I have read many positive reviews about this book and many scathing ones. I fall somewhere in the middle.
The concept was what drew me to finally pick Fallen up (I know – years behind everyone else) – the idea of fallen angels battling one another with mortals caught in the middle was an exciting one. I’m not quite sure, therefore, how this book ended up being so mediocre.
My main issues with Fallen were due to the characters – I just couldn’t bring myself to care about any of them. Our main protagonist Luce is rather… pointless. I went from finding her foolish and silly, to being irritated with her. The fact that she never seems to feel much guilt over what happened to her previous boyfriend certainly didn’t help endear me to her. But it was her actions that left me exasperated. I grew tired very quickly with her obsession over Daniel, how quick she was to defend his behaviour, her dithering between him and Cam, and I simply lost all respect once she started to stalk him. Not only did all this make her an incredibly weak character, but it just made no sense. Daniel is, unfortunately, rather boring. Achieving nothing but look pretty for 467 pages while acting like a jerk to Luce the very few times they interacte, before suddenly declaring his love and from there on out, refusing to tell her anything at all.
Not much action happens in this book, so I can only assume Kate was aiming to build up the tension and pace dramatically. I suspect more answers will be revealed in the next book, but with barely any questions answered and Daniel being deliberately cryptic I’m not sure I care enough to bother picking up book two to find out. There is a ‘big reveal’ about who Luce and Daniel are and what their past relationship is near the end of the book, but as this is something the reader has quite easily deduced from the opening chapter (or by Daniel’s name if you know your stuff), it has no impact, and it’s really just frustrating that the author hasn’t moved the story forward by this point.
There are some more interesting secondary characters and I liked Cam most of all. With these sort of stories, there is always a ‘love’ triangle and I have to admit I’m rooting for Cam (despite the bizarre 180 his character took at the end – I suspect, in an attempt to make Daniel look better), though it seems a foregone conclusion at this point which boy Luce will end up with by the end of the series.
Nothing much to excite here, sadly, despite the promise of some exciting angel mythology. Just the cliché of an unhealthy, bordering on obsessive, dramatic teenage romance.
This one wasn’t for me, but I can see why some people are big fans. I thought Lauren Kate’s writing was better than a lot of teenage romance books. Fans of supernatural romance like Twilight and Evermore will adore this one.
Recommended Reading Age: 12+
