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I've avoided reading this book for weeks now. It sounded to me like one of those books I usually avoid like the plague - the sort that would leave me rolling my eyes at it all the way through, yet make me have to read it all the way through. Nightmare!
So I shoved it to the back corner of my bookshelf, telling myself I'd read it on a day where there was nothing else better to do.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, whatever way you want to look at it) said day of boredom came to pass, and I decided that I might as well read it and get it over with. Once I was done, I was actually (sort of) pleasantly surprised.

'Fallen' is a story about fallen angels, boarding schools, and teen angst. My penchant for gothic stuff was why I bought it, but once I read more about it it seemed to be a mutant hybrid of 'Twilight' and 'Hush, Hush', the former a pretty crap book I enjoyed, the latter a very crap book I did not enjoy.

I'm not sure whether I actually thought it was alright because I had expected it to be so awful, or whether it genuinely was okay.
The main character, Luce, was one of the things I really thought I'd loathe - a whiny schoolgirl who didn't think she was all that special who actually is very special, and who gets noticed by the brooding hot guy at school, even when he is extremely rude to her. I like my heroines to have a little dignity - Luce's seeming disregard for her own seemed like something I'd detest. No matter how hot a guy is in a book, if he's so rude that it borders on verbal abuse, I always find that somewhat repugnant.
However, Luce wasn't as much of a bimbo as I'd had her down for - she was very annoying, yeah, but it wasn't as bad as I'd expected.
Daniel was (of course) very hot, but one dimensional and boring, much like Luce herself. The characters Luce meets at Sword & Cross were mildly more interesting, but the thing with the creepy guy whose name I can't remember (Cam?) was a little strange - why did she keep going back to him when he was obviously not all there?

Something else I found irritating was that 'Fallen' seemed to be a mash up of lots of other popular YA novels, namely 'Twilight', 'Hush, Hush', 'Evermore', 'Need', etc etc. It was pretty unoriginal and as a result not all that memorable. The 'forced love' thing with Daniel and Luce was stunted and not very romantic, and some of the things Luce blurted out to Daniel made me cringe with embarrassment. Sword & Cross was pretty atmospheric, but it didn't make up for the cardboard cut out characters and predictable plot.

However, there was a pretty good bit near the end when someone I never really expected to be a baddie turned out to be one - that provided some excitment to a somewhat dull 'epic battle' scene near the end. And when a character I liked got killed off, I realised I'd have been less upset if it'd been Luce who'd kicked the bucket, which is not a good way to be feeling about your protagonist more than 3/4 of the way through the book. But what can we do, I suppose...

Mostly this book proved itself to be another (perhaps better written) rip off of 'Twilight', not the worst I've ever read but certainly not the best either. However I prefer it when a book I expect to be utter rubbish turns out to be not so bad, rather than a book I expect to be rather good turns out to be complete tripe (cough, 'Hush, Hush'). So on that basis, and on the fact that there are some enjoyable moments, I'll give 'Fallen' 2/5, and hope that the author can mend some of the holes in this and turn it into something good (though I shan't be holding my breath) (: