Review/Teen Tuesday #4: Fallen

"We meet. We always meet, somehow we're always thrown together, no matter where I go, no matter how I try to distance myself from you. It never matters. You always find me." 

Fallen by Lauren Kate is the story of Lucinda Price a teenaged girl who lands herself in an alternative school for the accidental fiery death of her love interest. Luce proclaims her innocence, but no one believes her especially since she has a history of seeing menacing shadows, which is perceived to be mental illness.

As the tale unravels Luce learns the reasons behind the shadows and that she's a lot closer to the battle between good and evil than she could have ever imagined.  Luckily Luce’s path to discovering her past is paved by two very hot angels (of course the bad one is brunette and the good one is blond). *Rolls eyes*

I would first like to start off the review portion of this post by addressing the most commonly held belief about this book. That belief would be that Fallen is the ugly stepsister of the Twilight Saga, which couldn’t be further from the truth, and one read of the book will illustrate this. Actually having to read the book to know what it's about leads me to my next point. I've noticed a nasty little trend by some of the most popular reviewers on Goodreads: they tend to only read the sample of a book, the synopsis, or possibly even just other people's comments and then write a review blasting or praising a book.

Now you may be wondering how do you know? Well, I always read the reviews of books on GR's before I make the final decision to add a book to my to-read list, and I've realized that a lot of the things these popular book reviewers say happen in the books don't actually happen that way or they'll say something key about the plot that is completely wrong. This has happened on more than one occasion and Fallen is unfortunately one of the books these lazy reviewers have chosen to misrepresent.

I suppose you might like more proof. Well, one reviewer in particular mentions that Lucinda and her love interest (I won't tell you which hot angel) fall in love in two days, which I thought too was ludicrous of the author. Until I actually read the book and realized said love doesn't occur until about 80% (I read on Kindle).  I say all of this to remind everyone that books just like ice cream flavors are subjective. Odds are pretty good that when someone really hates a book, but I thought the premise was pretty interesting, I end up loving it or at least not hating it. Of course there are exceptions to every rule but in the event that I don't like a book I generally don't write a review. I just add it to my did-not-finish list. You catch more flies with sugar than vinegar.

Any who let's get into Fallen. I enjoyed the book, contrary to the popular opinion on Goodreads. I doubt this series is going to become my favorite, but it's a nice in-between-book-releases read. I usually hate the protagonist in most books I read, but Luce wasn't horrible. She wasn't as stupid and naïve as everyone made her out to be. I mean of course she's going to be confused when everyone around her knows more about the mysteries surrounding her life than she does. It was a nice break from know-it-all Anita Blake and baffled damsel-in-distress Stephanie Plum. The love plot was normal teen novel material with a bit of Time Traveller's Wife thrown in.

But let's get on to what I didn't like about the book, which is what most of you are here for anyways.  By the way THIS SECTION CONTAINS SPOILERS.

I didn't like that the angels couldn’t kill each other. I know it's a teen book and all but death adds drama and raises the stakes of the story. Granted we didn't know that they couldn't kill each other till the very end, but it frustrated me that Kate was gearing up to write several books about the same thing (the good vs. evil battle).

I also didn't care for the obscurity behind Luce's constant death every time she found out about Daniel's real identity. (Sorry, I know this is confusing if you haven't read the book). I don't feel like this novel really cleared up any of the mystery. It basically feels like this novel didn't start until about 60%-70%.

Overall, I thought Fallen was an acceptable young adult read.