Book Review: Fallen by Lauren Kate

Title: Fallen
Author: Lauren Kate
Series: Fallen #1
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Release Date: December 8 2009
My Source: Library
My Rating: 3/5

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.

I'm not really sure where to start when reviewing this. There's not a whole lot I really liked about this book, but I don't want to give it an extremely negative review because it wasn't that bad either. It kept me mildly entertained, even though it took me forever to get through it and towards the end I did have to force myself to finish it. Fallen follows the typical pattern in young adult paranormal romance books, which is sometimes pulled off very well and sometimes very poorly. It's about angels, which even though it's currently a very popular theme for paranormal books, it seemed new to me since I haven't really been interested in anything involving angels before (expect The Mortal Instruments series, but that was WAY different).
There are really two main things that bugged me when I was reading this book. The first is Luce. (the main character). Luce didn't know anything that was going on...the whole book. She always was so clueless to the plot, and therefore the reader was clueless too. The end of the book didn't wrap it up well, she is still totally in the dark about nearly everything in her life. I was waiting for a big "revelation" from Daniel, but it really never came. Her character was really weak too, it seemed like she accepted the fact that she didn't really know anything about her life way too easily. If it were me, I would've bugged Daniel for way more answers! The romance was shallow, she spent almost the whole book obsessing over Daniel for absolutely no reason that she or the reader knew, even though she hardly talked to him. The obsession got annoying to read about. Daniel was such a shallow character too. By the end of the book we still hardly know anything about him.
The second thing about this book was that it was so predictable. It followed the pattern of so many other young adult books that I felt like I've read this story before. Halfway through the book I had guessed all the plot twists of the end- who was secretly evil, and who was really on Luce's side. There was no suspense for me. And guess what? I was right.
I had to give this a decent rating because the cover is stunning, and it did leave me with enough desire to read the sequel Torment. If I read that book and Luce still hardly finds out anything about her life and the characters are still flat, I will have no desire to continue in this series.
In conclusion, there was a lot I didn't like about this book, but for it's genre, young adult paranormal romance, it fit perfectly, so I didn't dislike it either. It was predictable, but not awful, and I am a little curious to see more.