Fallen

Lauren Kate (author)

Random House, UK: 2009; 450pp

ISBN: 9780385618021

Genres: adventure, fantasy, gothic, romance

Issues: identity, trust, relationships

Luce has been sent to Sword & Cross Reform School in Georgia, USA, after a series of bizarre accidents. Nobody's been quite able to prove that Luce was responsible for them but nobody really doubts that she was, either. Only Luce knows the truth - and even she's not so sure about that any more.

All she knows is that she's been banished from all the people and things she loves and that her parents no longer trust her. Maybe Sword & Cross is the answer. Maybe there she can work out what on earth is going on and how to stop it happening again. Except that even here she can see the Shadows gathering, sense the menace in the air. Not to mention Daniel. How can Luce stay out of trouble when there's the mysterious Daniel Grigori - intense, distant, disconcerting, gorgeous and somehow strangely familiar - haunting the same hallways. Luce expected Reform School to be mundane, rule-driven and a place to find some way of learning to manage the danger she seems to bring with her. Instead she finds its complex politics and the undercurrents between students just one more puzzle in her already fragmented world.

Very much a gothic romance with a hint of melodrama, Fallen will appeal to readers of Stephanie Meyer and Cassandra Clare. The first in a series of at least four titles, this is Lauren Kate's first novel and explores the idea of the eternal battle for human souls, where fallen angels choose to ally themselves with either good or evil. Luce is a keystone, a character who recurs throughout the centuries and whose relationships with the fallen angels may well determine the outcome of the struggle. Teenage readers will delight in the dark drama, the rollercoaster relationships, the intense emotions and the constant clash between adults and adolescents.