Fallen by Lauren Kate

Fallen by Lauren Kate

My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I've been reading more YA since I have been in law school. It's digestible, undemanding, and lately has had a lot of promising titles in genre fiction. I have avoided the monster of the genre, since there's a lot about Twilight I know beforehand that I'll find objectionable. I had hoped that Fallen would be different.

But it's really not.

This was my first YA romance, and I found it really disturbing. The main character is flat, dimensionless--probably so that young women readers can project themselves onto her more completely. She's just a placeholder for both the author and the reader to get a little wish-fulfillment fix, since Luce can be just like ~anyone~ since she's not at all REAL. The love interests are a little more real, but that ends up being a bad thing. Luce is obsessed with one of them, to the point that even though he's a raging jerk to her she LOVES him from about page 100 on. For no reason. Though they've had no positive interactions. If literature teaches us how to act, and I believe that it does, then this book is teaching every young woman who reads it that social abuse is a marker that someone is your SOULMATE. UGH.

The idea was generally good. The execution leaves a lot to be desired. I suspect I won't pick up book two, even if it has a really gorgeous cover...

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