Review by Shellie for Fallen ~ by Lauren Kate (audio)
The first in a popular young adult/middle grade romance series about a teenage girl who is required to reside at a boarding school for troubled youths. But the students are not normal delinquents – they are fallen angels.
About: Luce is seeing things that her parents and the other adults in charge (teachers and the police) think are not real. That she appears to be responsible for the death of a fellow classmate (he burned to death) does not help either. It’s understandable that Luce is required to attend a school for damaged teens, a boarding school called Sword and Cross.
Luce is depressed at her apparent bad luck, lost in the old school’s halls where she does not quite fit in with the other students. She feels conflicted about her responsibility for her classmate’s death, and is also experiencing things that are out of the normal but that she knows are real – even though no-one else believes. She misses her mom and dad and the students at the boarding school are not very nice to her. When she meets Daniel, she cannot forget him and has trouble understanding why he likes her one minute then ignores her the next. Soon she finds that Daniel is not what he appears and that they have a past which is way more complicated that she could ever imagine.
Thoughts: This is my second go at this book. This time I listened to it in audio and enjoyed it. The reader has a pleasant young adult voice which I found easy to listen to. I abandoned the print version of the book in its arc format several years ago because it did not draw me in during the first several chapters. However, in its audio version I had no trouble completing the story.
As a person with a degree in education, I thought the book felt like a great one for middle-grade girls. It was easy to listen to, has light romance, and I would mark it as a “clean read” for early teens and pre-teens. There are some Christian and reincarnation themes which may be of interest to some, and just enough horror to keep most young readers interested.
Although I enjoyed the audio book, I personally do not feel a big desire to complete the other books in the series (there are another 5) and therefore give the book a 3 star. An enjoyable listen that I would recommend for tween girls, their parents and teachers looking for an intriguing dark romance for their female children/students.
Read by Justine Eyre; Listening Library; 10 hours, 56 minutes; December 2009.
This completed series includes a prequel and 4 sequels. For more information about the author and her books link to Lauren Kate’s website: http://laurenkatebooks.net/
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