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My Rating: ★★★★☆Before we even discuss Fallen by Lauren Kate, I need everyone to appreciate the fact that I found the ENTIRE SERIES at Savers for around $10.Ten. Fucking. Dollars.Do I consider this one of my greatest book-buying achievements? Absolutely. Thank you for asking. Now onto the actual book.I went into Fallen knowing full well that this series has received its fair share of negative reviews over the years. And while I absolutely read reviews and love seeing what other readers think, I'm also not a sheep who's going to dislike a book simply because the internet has collectively decided I'm supposed to.So I bought the whole damn series and decided to find out for myself.And you know what?I liked it.Fallen follows Luce Price as she's sent to Sword & Cross, a reform school in Savannah filled with surveillance cameras, strange rules, questionable students and an atmosphere that immediately screams something is very fucking wrong here. Then she meets Daniel Grigori—a mysterious boy she feels inexplicably drawn to, despite the fact that he seems determined to make it abundantly clear that he wants absolutely nothing to do with her.Naturally, Luce responds to this by becoming even more determined to figure him out.Because apparently self-preservation was not particularly fashionable in YA paranormal romance during this era.One thing I need to address immediately, though:Why the fuck are we comparing this to Twilight?Yes, I get it. Fallen was released in 2009, right in the middle of the paranormal YA explosion when Twilight was basically unavoidable. There's a mysterious supernatural boy. There's a teenage girl drawn to him. There's romance, danger and plenty of brooding.But can we please allow paranormal romances to exist without automatically deciding they're Twilight with a different supernatural creature?Because Fallen has a completely different atmosphere.Sword & Cross is dark, oppressive and genuinely unsettling. The mystery surrounding Luce, Daniel, the shadows she sees, and the strange familiarity she feels toward someone she's supposedly never met gives the story an almost gothic quality. Rather than immediately explaining its supernatural world, the book spends a significant amount of time making Luce—and therefore the reader—wonder what the hell is actually happening.And personally? I enjoyed that.I can understand why some readers might find the pacing slow, because Lauren Kate takes her sweet fucking time handing over answers. There is a lot of Luce questioning things, investigating Daniel, noticing increasingly strange behaviour and receiving approximately zero useful explanations from anybody around her.Would communication solve a significant portion of her problems?Probably.Would that completely destroy the plot?Also probably. 😂But the slower build worked for me because it created this constant feeling that there was something much bigger happening underneath everything we were being shown. I wanted to understand Daniel. I wanted to know what the shadows meant. I wanted to know why certain characters behaved the way they did. Most importantly, I wanted to understand why Luce and Daniel seemed connected long before Luce herself could possibly understand it.The romance is also very much a product of its era—and I don't necessarily mean that negatively. There's yearning. There's obsession. There's the mysterious boy who alternates between stay away from me and I would probably tear apart the universe for you. There's teenage decision-making that occasionally makes you want to reach into the book and shake somebody.It's peak late-2000s paranormal YA energy.And maybe I'm nostalgic for that style of storytelling, but fuck it. I had fun.That doesn't mean I thought Fallen was perfect. There were moments where I wanted the story to move faster, and there were definitely times when Luce's fixation on Daniel became frustrating when there were approximately seventeen other concerning things happening around her that perhaps deserved some attention. Some of the eventual revelations also left me with more questions than answers.But considering this is the first book in a series, I'm willing to let Lauren Kate cook.What Fallen did successfully was make me curious enough to want the next book.And for a series opener? That's kind of the fucking point.I would recommend Fallen to readers who enjoy old-school YA paranormal romance, mysterious supernatural love interests, gothic boarding-school settings, reincarnation and fate themes, slow-building supernatural mysteries, and romances with that dramatic “we are inexplicably drawn together and apparently the universe itself has opinions about it” energy.Overall, Fallen was atmospheric, mysterious, dramatic and unapologetically reminiscent of the paranormal YA era it came from. It wasn't flawless, and I can understand some of the criticisms surrounding its slower pacing, but I also think there's a difference between recognising a book's flaws and deciding you're not allowed to enjoy it because Goodreads told you not to.
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? Dangerously exciting and darkly romantic. Fallen is a thrilling story about forbidden love.
oh wow the good vs evil, good angel bad angel. and possible armageddon.. this book has everything. loved it. Team Daniel I think.... although Team Cam is ever so tempting.
I read this book earlier this year. I must say not everything is clear in my mind.The story was good, and I liked the ending of Luce and Daniels story and a small look into the other characters' future.The main part of the story was okay, but there were parts where I didn't love the story I did not expect the ending, but I liked it anyway. So, overall, were the story a bit over okay.
Pretty good book. It drug on for too long. The last few chapters were the best part of the book.