Fallen

by Lauren Kate

4 out of 5 on goodreads.com

Though I dread the flight from L.A. to New York, it is inevitable that I make the trip at least twice a year.  (And hopefully after a book deal it would be more! Insert wishful thinking.)  The good thing about being an avid reader is that I read a (good) book in about five hours, which fits in perfectly with the airtime.  This latest trip the book of choice was Lauren Kate’s Fallen, mainly because I had heard Kate’s name over and over again and the last book, Rapture, has just been released.

Obviously the fact that I read it in five hours means I liked it enough to well…read it in five hours.  The characters well developed and stand out on their own which is considerably harder with so many active characters (I’d consider eight active characters through the book). It isn’t an action book by a long shot, but gives you just a tidbit of information at a time to make you want to answer the brand new question Kate just threw at you.

Spoilers below…

I already knew the book was paranormal/angel-related, which was one of the reasons I chose it over some other books, being that I’m writing on the same topic and paranoid I’m going to find a plot like mine.  Luckily, this one isn’t.  It was pretty easy to guess that Daniel and Luce were the two in the prologue, which killed a bit of the mystery in their connection.  Had I not known it was angel-related, I would have gone and assumed Cam was the devil incarnate due to the necklace he gave Luce, but that is moreso because I went to CCD for nine years.  I also knew Daniel was a Watcher because that is another name for Grigori, but that’s because I came across that in my own research. It was also a give away that Gabe and Arriane were some of the “good guys.”  Miss Sophia took me by surprised, which was one of the few outcomes that did catch me off guard.  I would have liked if there were more of those.  Kate didn’t really go into details of the “types” of fallen angels aka Watchers, but making some of them “good” is a nice twist since they are generally seen as evil.

I’m not quite sure if I would have been so eager to read the next book if it wasn’t for the epilogue between Cam and Daniel that finally left me with the WTH???? reaction I was hoping I’d eventually get.  I’ll be reading Torment on the plane back if I stay awake.  It’s 3am and my flight is at 6, so I haven’t gone to bed. Yet.

-AB