Fallen - Lauren Kate

So, I've been very slow in my fiction reading lately, amazing what a three hour delay on a train will do to help that!!!

Luckily for me, I happened into Easons before I got on my train and bought 3 for 2 books - one of which was Fallen by Lauren Kate.

Fallen, is a story about a girl called Lucie who is being 'reformed' after a terrible incident by being sent to Swords & Cross. There she meets a lot of strange young people, including two love interests Cam and Daniel. As the story progress, Lucie begins to realise that things aren't as normal as they seem, and that something is very different but comforting/familiar about Daniel.

Ok, so essentially Fallen follows the YA paranormal template, where Lucie is a new girl with something special about her who arrives at a new school and meets this strange new guy, who she is absolutely infatuated with and becomes obsessed with finding out his secrets.

This is what YA paranormal usually consists of, so I'm not going to go on about originality etc. as the way I see it, there is always a general pattern in all genres. Also I don't think it does this book justice to make comparisons.


*Spoiler Alert*


Back to Fallen, I really liked this book. I started reading it as a distraction on a stuffy warm train and it helped the time fly by for me (which is saying something). Once I was home, I had to keep reading.

I think Lauren Kate did an amazing job with this story and her characters, especially IMO Cam. It would have been so easy to cast him as the villain of the piece, but you really don't get to see this side of him till the end of the book. Seriously, although I read of the back of the book, I felt more drawn to Cam as the romantic lead (I honestly don't know what that says about me) - he was charming, perfect etc. yet you got hints that although Lucie felt something for him, there was a tinge of something darker attached.

The book is also nice and suspenseful, the pacing is perfect. I never felt that she was a] rushing the tension/love plot (till the end) or b] dragging it out. She just got it exactly right, so that I just kept turning the pages and was pulled into this world.

Like I said before, this story contains the YA template but it does have other suspenseful elements and can be dark in places. Lucie is not a perfect character, she is flawed and is full of guilt and fear over her past, but she is relatable and likable. I liked the minor characters as well such as Penn, whose death I felt was unnecessary. I imagine she would have made a nice human/grounding character for the future books, essentially someone to crack a joke or help Lucie remember being half normal.

I enjoyed that there is a bigger story behind the love story, that there is actually something bigger to be revealed as I continue with this series and that we don't (like Lucie) get all the answers by the end of the book. I'm really fascinated by Cam and Daniel's relationship and how this will all play out.

I give this book 8/10 though, because I felt that 'the shadows' explanation Daniel gave was a bit blah, I'm hoping that something more will be revealed here as I thought they were more than just demon gossips, especially with what happened to Trevor and Todd. I felt that the Sophia character was just a bit *there*, like she was thrown in as a twist and I didn't think she was exactly necessary. Lastly, 7/8ths of this books is excellently written and page turning good, but I felt that the action parts and the last chapter were not up to the standard of the rest of the book.

But I absolutely loved the epilogue, and am completely intrigued by where this story is heading and what Lucie's place is in relation to both Daniel and Cam.

So I do recommend you give this a read. It's fun, dark and romantic but with a dash of something bigger to come.