Fallen By Lauren Kate

As I have just bought the final installment of the Fallen series I thought it would be a good idea to review all four of them as I re-read them.  So the first of four, here is Fallen!

I’ve had Fallen since it first came out. It has gone up and down in my top ten list for the past few years. It’s usually pretty high up but it is a complex story line. The first book takes place in the Sword and Cross reform school. It is Lucinda (Luce) Price’s first day.  After a mysterious fire and a dead boy with a mysterious cause of death, Luce is left looking guilty and put into a reform school.  All her life Luce has seen “shadows” and when ever they turn up, someone dies.

The school is so utterly depressing, it is basically a prison with cameras or “reds” everywhere as the students call them. With dead grounds and many convict student who have to walk around with tracking bracelets on their ankles.

Shortly after arriving at Sword and Cross Luce is pulled into a love triangle. So cliché but it does work. There’s Cam, the kind, thoughtful, though kind of scary guy and Daniel  who is distant and brisk with Luce but for some reason she can’t help but feel like she’s met him before. That would be because she has. Luce is basically killed off and reincarnated every seventeen years, this is punishment for a certain angel who fell from the sky because he fell in love creating some big ol’ rift in the sky.

Luce finds a few friends, the eccentric Arianne and Penn. Penn is the only person in the school who’s isn’t there because they need mental help or are a convict. Her father used to be groundskeeper (but you can guess easily by the state of the school that there is not groundskeeper when Luce arrives at Sword and Cross) the headmaster is now her legal guardian. She’s the voice of reason and sanity in the book, and her character is vital. She's an office aide so she's the best person to go to to sneak some files!

The book is written exceptionally well and is very gripping. It could do with some more couple action in my mind. The main couple basically has only a few moments and they’re not all that romantic, I hope that will be changed in the future books. There’s more romance with other pairings, and I feel that this should be different. It’s hard to believe that the love between Luce and Daniel is true amazing love when they hardly connect with each other. There’s one kiss scene and they’re meant to be in love after a load of arguments and one smooch?

But I think that focusing on Luce that this book is quite good, following her story and not her romances is interesting.  Her actual life without romance is good, the shadows and the other characters are positive aspects of the novel. Luce’s friend Arianne is one of my personal favorite characters, she is a bit of a nut job who has a tracker bracelet on her ankle. But lets just keep it as she’s far from human, like a lot of people in this novel!

Overall I really enjoyed Fallen and have re-read it three times. It’s a solid eight from me!

8/10

lissy x