Just finished reading Lauren Kate’s book Fallen and found it quite entertaining, to say the least.
Although the later part of the book glued me to every page, I just felt like Lauren took her time in the first half. I mean, she took too long to get to the grit of it all. Had I a patience a few seconds short, I’d have dropped the book then and left the rest unread.
Fallen is about the story of Luce Price and Daniel Grigori whose love affair can dictate the fate of the rest of mankind.
Lucinda Price or Luce is a mere human who falls for Daniel, an angel, one of those angels who chose to depart from the presence of the almighty creator to live on earth among humans. The thing about Luce’s falling for Daniel is that this has happened more times than can be counted. Every reincarnation of Luce means another short love affair. Short, in the sense that when they meet, it would take a short while before they kiss. And the kiss meant the death of Luce. And again, Luce would be reborn. And Daniel would then have to wait another 17 years for her to come back and find him. And endless cycle.
An endless cycle indeed, except that in this particular lifetime, Luce was born to non-Christian parents who did not have her baptized. In this story, Lauren Kate states that a person who is not baptized will not be reborn or reincarnated again after his/her death. Thus her death this time, should it happen, will be final. Could Daniel survive eternity without Luce?
The story is set in a halfway house or more specifically a halfway school, Sword & Cross, where young students who are psycho challenged are enrolled. Luce got there because of an incident where a boy friend got incinerated to ashes after they kissed. She claims no clear recollection of the event, but she has a feeling that the smoke-like shadowy mist that keeps following her has got something to do with it.
Although I find that Kate Lauren may have the tendency to drag the story a bit too long at the start, I still find myself wanting to read her next book in this series.
An interesting side bit of this post is that this ‘Fallen’ book was lent to me by Joy Chan, a friend of my wife Jen. Joy has quite a collection of YA books, a room-full I would guess. But after December 17, this book which I have yet to return to her may have been the only remaining book in her collection because her house was washed out by the recent flood that hit the city.