Fallen-Lauren Kate

In this book, Luce Price is the main character. Her parents sent her to Sword & Cross reform school. Sword & Cross is more like a prison than a school. Some student even have to wear wristband with tracking chips in them. Luce has seen shadows all her life and back at her old prep school they caused something to happen to a boy she was alone with. Luce is on parole now for a crime she didn't commit. Luce meets Daniel. He ignores her and tries to avoid her as much as possible, but she eventually confronts him. Cam is nothing but nice to Luce. He even buys her a necklace, but Luce can't stop thinking about Daniel. It turns out that throughout her past lives she has always met him. Daniel is a damned Angel. He will live for ever only to see Luce die every seventeen or so years. Luce has a hard time believing this stuff but realizes that it's true later. Cam is evil and Daniel wants to save her. I can't go on anymore without spoiling the whole plot. The book's 452 pages long and I read it in 3 days. It's really good. It reminds me of the last book I read, Devil's Kiss because there's watchers (Grigoris) in it. It also reminds me of the Immortals series because Ever was killed over and over in her past lives too.


Pop Lit Journal:

This book had topics in common with other books I’ve read recently. Before this book I read Devil’s Kiss by Sarwat Chadda. It had a fallen angel in it too. A Watcher, or a Grigori. In that book they were evil, dark angels. Billi started falling for the Angel of Death because she was being deceived into trusting him. In Fallen, there are also some bad fallen angels. Luce is deceived into trusting Cam and Mrs. Sophia. Both basically had fallen angels in them. In Fallen the fallen angels were condemned to Earth for loving a human or something more than God. They didn’t elaborate, but it was pretty much what’s in the bible. Hush, Hush by Becca FitzPatrick also was about fallen angels. It was more like this book than any of the other ones I will mention. Nora, like Luce, falls for a fallen angel guy and end up in the middle of a great heavenly war.

There was also the concept of past lives in this book. Luce always died not long after she met Daniel every seventeen years. This reminded me of Alyson Noë l’s Immortals series where Ever was killed by Drina after she and Damon fell in love in each of her past lives. Since Daniel was condemned, he will live for ever only to see Luce show up in his life, fall in love with him and die every seventeen or so years.

She would sometimes die when they kissed because he is an angel, and it could shock her somehow. Sometimes she’d die from an information overload or by being killed somehow. She thought it sounded a bit romantic at first, like they were star-crossed lovers, but then it hit her that could die soon. She didn’t want to believe it though. She thought it sounded crazy, but her seeing shadow seemed crazier to her. Daniel said she never was able to see the shadows in her past lives. It’s almost like she has some kind of psychic ability now, like Ever had after becoming immortal, but not really. Maybe her soul’s evolving or something.

I want to mention the setting. A lot of books have boarding schools in them, but I haven’t read many with reform schools in them. Sword & Cross is a reform high school for young felons, insane teens and juvenile delinquents. Luce was pretty sane, though she didn’t believe it. She thought she might have killed Trevor and she deserved to be there. She became friends with the only sane person there, Penn. There were also other fallen angels hiding among them as students: Arriane, Roland, Cam, and Gabbe.

~*Haley*