Thursday, June 24, 2010

REVIEW: Fallen by Lauren Kate

What if the person you were meant to be with could never be yours? 17-year-old Lucinda falls in love with a gorgeous, intelligent boy, Daniel, at her new school, the grim, foreboding Sword & Cross ...only to find out that Daniel is a fallen angel, and that they have spent lifetimes finding and losing one another as good & evil forces plot to keep them apart. Some angels are destined to fall...

When I first heard about Fallen, I was quite excited. I read the little blurb and saw that the cover is absolutely beautiful and couldn't wait to read it. And then it was published and the reviews started trickling my way. And some were amazing reviews and others thought it dull and slow. So I was a bit wary. I wrote it off thinking that I'd give it a miss entirely. And then I saw it in the library and thought 'here's my chance to make up my own mind' ... and, I think I fall somewhere in the middle of the two camps.

It IS a little slow. There's this huge (but slow) build-up towards the ending. I knew that the book was about fallen angels before I picked up the book, it even says so on the little blurb thing, but the main character doesn't find out until 100 pages from the end. That doesn't normally make for interesting reading, but I have to admit, I was kind of still intrigued. The atmosphere of this old school was interesting, the characters became a little more developed. And while my original thought was that everything needed to happen at a quicker pace, I'm hoping that all this scene-setting and character backgrounds are out of the way that by the time Torment rolls around, it'll be all action and love-triangle goodness.

Having said that, I didn't really like the Luce-Daniel relationship. I'm sure it will change now that Luce (finally) knows (some of) the truth, but I wasn't keen on Daniel giving her the cold-shoulder and all the mixed signals and being mean to her. And I didn't really like that she was still madly, hopelessly in love with him despite it all. Because I'm not a fan of the idea of two people being in love without seeing some evidence of there being something between them other than physical attraction. But I'm willing to put those issues to one side and let Torment decide for me. If there's more to Luce and Daniel besides this shared history that we haven't really been shown yet, if the pace picks up then I'm hooked - Lauren Kate has got me for however long the series is. We'll see.

6 comments:

  1. I was really disappointed with this book. The slow build up drove me mad. I have yet to read an angel book that has been good. Hush, hush, was awful too.

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  2. I haven't read this just because I'm not crazy about angels in books. I liked David Almond's Skellig, because the angel wasn't AT ALL romanticized, but that's the only angel book I've felt unmixedly fond of.

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  3. Once again proving how subjective reading is I adored this one. Having gone to a Church in Wales Primary school the religious references and imagery was amazing.
    I just love how different people have different opinions. The awesomeness that is books :D

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  4. I know I've read this book.. I thought the cover was very pretty.. But I don't remember it. I guess that says what I thought about it huh?

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  5. Mmm, it does seem like it would be pretty long and dragged out given that she doesn't find out the angel thing until 100 pages from the end. That might drive me batty.

    But I do loooove that cover.

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  6. Boy, there sure has been a spate of books released that involve heroines in unhealthy relationships, haven't there? Thanks for the info on this one...I loved the cover and was tempted, but think I'll pass on it for now since the Luce-Daniel thing would really just tick me off. ;)

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