Title: Fallen
Average Customer Review:
Number of Comments: 4 Rating(s)   4 Review(s)

Book Review: Fallen (Fallen #1) by Lauren Kate

March 10, 2013
Reviewer:

Fallen is about a young girl named Lucinda “Luce” Price. She has a past, a past she can’t quite remember. She was involved in the death of a young guy named Trevor. She can’t remember what happened. All she remembers are the shadows that were there. The shadows have been following her all her life. So Luce’s parents send her to a reform school. At this school, Sword & Cross, she uncovers secrets she never imagined and a lot of them are connected to her.

Now like lots of other people, the cover is what really got me on wanting to read this book. It is beautiful and dark. Problem is, what’s inside is not as dark as the cover would lead you to believe. The shadows in the book weren’t even the main antagonist. The actual antagonist was someone you would not have seen coming, which was great, but disappointed me a bit where others were concerned.

The characters weren’t bad. The main character Luce wasn’t a favorite for me. It wasn’t that she was awful or anything, she was just selfish. There was a point in the book where someone died trying to save her, but instead of mourning his death at his funeral, she is worried about her love life. At least she actually pointed it out, but doesn’t erase the other times she did it. Daniel the main guy in the story, wants nothing to do with her, but for some reason, he and Luce are connected. I liked this part of the story, but there is much more to it than what we are given, so it felt unfinished.

Cam is the other guy who is after Luce and he actually likes her, but she leads him on throughout the book. The whole time she is with him, she is thinking about Daniel, the guy that doesn’t like her. Arian was a good character. She brought some spunk to the story, but my favorite was Penny. She sort of reminded me of Velma from Scooby Doo. She was smart and knew everything about everyone and if she didn’t, she would find out soon enough.

It took until about halfway until this book actually got into the plot. The first half was of Luce getting adjusted to the school, worrying about boys, and trying to ignore the shadows. But even when we get to the second half and find out what truly is going on; it still didn’t make much sense to me. I don’t want to give anything away, but there is a war going on and in the book they say there is never a winner. They can’t kill each other. Okay…then why try? And I am still not a 100% onboard with how it ties in with the love story. I like the idea behind the love story, but we weren’t given enough backstory on how it truly works. But I think that is something that will be slowly revealed in the next book. Daniel has a huge story and we were just given a glimpse of it. There is much more there.

Overall, this wasn’t bad, but it needed more. I got the audiobook version to this, but I know the book is about 450 pages. But a lot of that didn’t add much to the story when you get down to it. But this is a debut, so I am taking it as a way of us just getting our feet wet. I hope I will be able to dive into the next one. Without the paranormal aspect of this book, most of it felt like reading a teenage girl’s diary; crushes, school, pretty girl in school who is trying to take your crush. I am definitely going to start Torment (book 2) very soon. This was a good debut, but it didn’t knock me out of my chair.