Fallen

Fallen
Author: Lauren Kate
Book #1 of The Fallen series
Pages: 452
My Rating: 3/5 stars
Summary: (From Goodreads)
 There’s something achingly familiar about Daniel Grigori.

Mysterious and aloof, he captures Luce Price’s attention from the moment she sees him on her first day at the Sword & Cross boarding school in sultry Savannah, Georgia. He’s the one bright spot in a place where cell phones are forbidden, the other students are all screw-ups, and security cameras watch every move.

Even though Daniel wants nothing to do with Luce–and goes out of his way to make that very clear–she can’t let it go. Drawn to him like a moth to a flame, she has to find out what Daniel is so desperate to keep secret . . . even if it kills her.

 Fallen was an engaging read, but there were things that dissapointed me. But there were also things that had me happily surprised.

 Fallen had a fascinating and absolutely riveting setting. The boarding school Sword & Cross with the Savannah background was amazing but spooky. It was described really well, with the crumbling cemetery and lots of other things mixed in, and I could practically feel the humid fog. A shudder always crept through me when I was reading about the setting, because it is so creepy, yet amazingly so. It was really interesting that this book was set at a reform school, since I have never read a book that has a setting at one. The setting was one of the strong points in Fallen.

 Sadly, there were weak points. I gave Fallen three stars mostly because of the plot. For starters, nothing really happend until I was 400 pages in. Well, nothing of major importance or that was exciting. I'm okay with low-key books that don't have to much action, but I do like an exciting plot. When anything exciting did start to happen, it was always something I easily guessed. Overall, the plot was not exciting and rather quiet, as well as quite obvious.

 The other thing that I liked about Fallen, though, was the characters. They had great personalties, at least. They were intriguing. I did not particuliarly like Luce, and she seemed like quite a boring character. Daniel was exciting and mysterious, not to mention a total heartthrob. The trouble with him, though, was that his big so-called secret? Obvious. You can literally look at the title and it's obvious. Arianne was my favourite character, and she was fun, sarcastic, and bouncy. I was a little dissapointed when Luce found her new best friend, Penn, and Arianne was totally not in the book after that. She appeared in three scenes and was there in the end, but she was never anything interesting. The other characters were quite obvious too. What they were, or what they would become was so easily guessed. Gabbe, Miss Sophia, Cam were alright characters, but also nothing special.

 Overall, Fallen was an okay read, but definitely not something ever worth buying. I'd read the sequel, Torment, but I'm not expecting anything awesome from it.