Book Review: Fallen by Lauren Kate

Title:  Fallen

Author:  Lauren Kate
Publisher:  Delacourt Press 
Genre: YA
Hardcover: 452 pages

ISBN: 0385738935

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.

• Overall rating: 8/10

To buy this book: IndieBound | The Book Depository | Powell's | Amazon

Add this book to your: Goodreads | Shelfari | Library Thing | Visual Bookshelf

Lauren Kate's Fallen is a paranormal romance set against the backdrop of a decaying reform school in the Deep South.  Luce has been haunted by mysterious shadows all her life, and it seems that they are getting more and more aggressive.  After surviving a deadly fire under suspicious circumstances, she finds herself shipped off to a reform school in Georgia where she quickly finds herself courted by one boy and irresistibly drawn to another.

What I Liked:

-     I am a sucker for love stories that defy time, so I really enjoyed that aspect of Fallen.
-     Many of the secondary characters in this book kept me guessing, wondering who was to be trusted and who had ulterior motives.
-     Before I started reading this book, I was concerned that the story would remind me too much of other books (like Hush, Hush and Twilight), but overall I was pleasantly surprised.  Luce did not drive me crazy, and although Daniel was not nearly as forthcoming as I wanted him to be, he was not an insufferable jerk or a 'bad boy' either.  I found their attraction to one another believable.  And Cam was also surprisingly likable.
-     The action and conflict kicked up a notch in the final quarter of the book, so that left me eager to check out Torment, the second book in the series.
-     I liked that the author was not afraid to kill characters, so I wasn't completely positive who would make it to the final pages.

What I Liked Less:

-     Luce's obsession with Daniel felt fairly static and one-note in the middle of this book, but every time it started to grate on my nerves I thought about the all-consuming nature of high school romances & tried to forgive her obsessiveness.  Plus, although she may not be fully aware of it, Luce really does have a valid reason to be drawn to Daniel.
-     I wanted more background information about the characters' histories, and I found everyone's insistence on keeping Luce in the dark frustrating.

Fallen is a fairly slow-building paranormal romance, and I look forward to seeing where this series goes in the next three books.  I was especially excited to hear that the third book in the series, Passion, will be a prequel to Fallen that spans 5000 years.  How fun to see two characters falling in love in a wide variety of time periods and places over the course of several millennia.  If you like relatively chaste romances, angels, or love stories that span several centuries, then you will want to pick up Fallen.  Fans of Shelena Shorts' The Pace  will probably want to check out Fallen.   The second book in the Fallen series, Torment (which has a gorgeous cover) was released September 28th.  I picked up a copy and look forward to reading it soon.  If you would like to learn more about Fallen or Lauren Kate's other books, you can visit her Fallen website, author website, blog, or twitter.

Read an excerpt from Fallen here!

Flower Friday - Jacob's Ladder + Friday's Fab Five

Jacob's Ladder

This week's featured flower is Jacob's Ladder!  This perennial blooms from late spring through mid-summer.  It has small bluish-purple flowers and grows best in partial shade.  This particular variety gets to be around two feet tall and eighteen inches wide.  The feather-like leaves are just as pretty as the flowers, so this plant is lovely even before it begins blooming.  Some varieties of Jacob's Ladder have variegated leaves and some have white or pink flowers.  Cats like the smell of this plant, so young plants may need to be protected in order to flourish.   To learn more about about Jacob's Ladder, check out Better Homes & Gardens'  Jacob's Ladder page, Wikipedia's Jacob's Ladder page, or the Jacob's Ladder page at Dave's Garden.

A few book & blogosphere notes:

1.  Novel Novice is giving away three copies of Lauren Kate's Torment.   Be sure to stop by and check out their exclusive interviews with Lauren Kate & enter to win a copy of Torment here (ends 10/8).

2.  Candace's Book Blog is hosting a 1,000 Follower Giveaway.   There will be four winners and one part of the contest is even open to international followers (a book under $15 from The Book Depository).  So be sure to stop by and enter that contest here (ends 10/22).

3.  Visit the Goodreads page for Erin Blakemore's The Heroine's Bookshelf: Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder & enter to win one of fifteen advance copies they are giving away (ends 11/1).  The publisher is also giving away fifteen copies for review through LibraryThing, and you can enter that giveaway here  (about halfway down the page - ends 10/27).   I can't wait to read this book!  :-)

This fun meme is hosted by Froggarita's Bookcase.  Every Friday Froggarita asks five questions so we can all get to know each other better.  The only rule is that you can't use the same answer twice within your five!   Ready to play?  Leave your answers in the comments or leave us a link to your own Friday's Fab Five post. 

1.  Favorite fruit?

Apples!

2.  Favorite vegetable?

Mmm... broccoli!

3.  Favorite cheese?

Daiya vegan cheese!

4.  Favorite lunchmeat?

Tofurky deli slices!

5.  Favorite nut?

Almonds ... yum!

Book Review: The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove by Lauren Kate

Title: The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove
Author: Lauren Kate
Genre: YA
Publisher: Razorbill 
Paperback:  248 pages
ISBN:  1595142657
Summary:  All it takes is one fatal mistake...
What she wanted:  Natalie Hargrove wants one thing and one thing only - to be her high school's Paletto Princess.  Among the other Southern Belles, a.k.a. Bambies, competing for the crown, she's by far the most beautiful, and the most deserving.  Or so she thinks.
The catch:  Her boyfriend, Mike King, is on the brink of losing Palmetto Prince to Nat's nasty nemesis Justin Balmer.  And let's just say Natalie and Justin have a history so shady it could wither flowers.  Sure, Natalie could share the throne with Justin - over her dead body.
The trick:  So Nat convinces Mike to help her play a naughty little prank on Justin... just to make him look bad.  Little do they know, their plan is about to go terribly, terribly wrong.
The fatal flaw:  Natalie and Mike desperately try to cover up what happened to Justin.  But blackmail and buried desire, dark secrets and even darker deeds slowly begin to tear the apart.  Because as it turns out, fate is the one thing more twisted than Natalie Hargrove.  [Cover image provided by amazon.com & summary taken from the back  of the book.]

Overall rating: 7/10

To buy this book:  Powell's | Amazon | The Book Depository | IndieBound

Add this book to your:  Goodreads | Shelfari | LibraryThing | Visual Bookshelf

Macbeth meets Gossip Girl in this dark tale of ambition gone wrong.  Natalie Hargrove & her mother have climbed the South Carolina social ladder one morally ambiguous step at a time, and as the novel opens they both have their sights set on gold.  As her mother pursues a wealthy man in an effort to secure financial freedom & an elevated social status, Natalie sets her sights on securing the title of Palmetto Princess (essentially the wealthy high school's very celebrated prom queen).  In fact, Natalie has spent the past few years building a foundation of popularity designed to guarantee her the crown, and as the competition nears her ambition becomes obsessively focused on securing both the Palmetto Princess title for herself & the Palmetto Prince title for her popular & malleable boyfriend, Mike King.  Natalie has Lady Macbeth's aggressive determination and a willingness head into murky moral territory to pursue her goals, and she has Macbeth's unquenchable desire for the crown (as well as his paranoia about losing it).  When the prank she devises to remove her boyfriend's competition for Palmetto Prince takes a fatal turn, Natalie's ambitious nature is put to the test.  Although she struggles with some of the dark consequences of her actions, her determination never wavers. 


Mike King plays what could be considered a very watered-down Macbeth.  He too wants the crown & the title, but he does not share even one tenth of Natalie's single-minded determination, and he often hesitates to continue their pursuit once the waters begin to get murky. The Scottish play's violent & bloody elements are replaced by the backstabbing emotional cruelty of a high school with a brutal social hierarchy.   As in Macbeth, the women are often the more aggressive wielders of power here, and their primary weapons are social manipulation & skillfully orchestrated deceitfulness.  True to Macbeth, hallucinations & prophecy both play a roll as the story unfolds.  But all of the Shakespearean parallels aside, readers may find themselves so caught up in the Gossip Girl style drama of the high school scene, that they won't see the end coming.

What I Liked:

• This is an ambitious book.  A Macbeth-inspired story set against a catty high school backdrop could have been completely predictable or such a literal retelling that it lost its own voice.  As it turns out, Natalie definitely has her own unique (often despicable, occasionally pitiable) voice & the plot does not follow the play so closely that you see everything coming from six miles away.
• Relying on a relatively unsympathetic protagonist to carry the narrative is always risky.  Not all readers are willing to follow a largely unlikeable character through her rise to & fall from grace, but Natalie's mysterious past will keep readers turning the pages even if they find her reprehensible.
• Natalie's home life and history add a compelling depth to her character.
• The quick pace stays consistent throughout the story, making it a fast & entertaining read.

What I Wished:

• I wanted Mike to have more personality & a larger roll to play.  He felt a bit two dimensional to me.
• I didn't fully believe some of the descriptions of Natalie's past, given the very young age she must have been at the time.
• As a fan of Macbeth, I actually wanted the book to parallel the play a little more closely & would have liked it to be a little darker.
• A few of the sub-plots & lesser characters seemed underdeveloped to the point that they weren't particularly necessary.  The story would have benefited from either developing those elements further or from cutting them out altogether.

This book will appeal to fans of Gossip Girl, Heathers, Cruel Intentions, and contemporary takes on Shakespeare.  If you want to learn more about The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove or about Lauren Kate's other recent release, Fallen, and its upcoming sequel, Torment, please visit her website, blog, and twitter.  

Happy Reading!  :-)