Summary: Fallen

The GIST

Fallen by Lauren Kate is the 2009 young adult bestseller that swapped vampires for angels. Published by Delacorte Press in the wake of Twilight, it took the ingredients readers were hungry for (a brooding boy, a girl who cannot stay away, a love that feels fated) and gave them a gothic, Southern flavour all its own: a decaying reform school in Georgia, shadows only one girl can see, and a romance with roots far older than either of the teenagers living it appears to be.

It runs to some 450 pages and opens a series that continues through Torment, Passion and Rapture, with the companion volumes Fallen in Love and Unforgiven alongside. It was adapted into a 2016 film. One parents' guide summed up its appeal by declaring fallen angels the new, more charming vampires. For a generation of readers it was the book you stayed up with under the covers, and it remains a touchstone of the paranormal romance boom.

The Story

Lucinda Price, known as Luce, is seventeen, and her life has just collapsed. A boy she liked died in a fire. She was with him. She cannot fully remember what happened, she cannot explain it, and she has been blamed. What she does know, and has learned not to say out loud, is that the shadows were there. She has seen them for as long as she can remember: dark, shifting shapes at the edge of things that no one else notices. They have earned her years of doctors, therapy and medication, and a growing suspicion that she may really be ill. Now they have earned her something worse.

Her parents, who love her and believe they are doing the right thing, deliver her to Sword & Cross, a reform school in Savannah, Georgia, for teenagers who have broken the law, acted out, or been caught up in something nobody can account for. The place is as cheerless as its name. The buildings are old and crumbling, the gates are iron, cameras watch every corridor, and the whole campus feels less like a school than a haunted asylum. There is even a cemetery on the grounds. Luce has been shuffled between schools before, but this is the worst yet.

She starts to learn the faces. Arriane is edgy, unpredictable and darkly funny, and decides on the spot to take the new girl under her wing. Molly takes one look at Luce and seems to hate her. Penn, bookish, sharp and loyal, is the daughter of the school's late librarian; she knows every back stair and filing cabinet in the place and quickly becomes the best friend Luce has. Around them move others who seem to know one another better than new classmates should, among them Gabbe and Roland, and a teacher, Miss Sophia, who takes a kindly interest in Luce.

And there are two boys. Cam is all easy charm, swagger and attention. He notices Luce at once, seeks her out, flatters her and makes it plain he would like to know her much better. He is the classic bad boy with a secret behind the smile, and he is hard to resist.

Then there is Daniel Grigori. The first time Luce sees him, something inside her lurches. It is not simply that he is beautiful. It is that she knows him. She is sure of it, with a force of deja vu she has never felt, as if she has seen that face a hundred times. Daniel looks back at her and, by way of greeting, gives her the finger.

So begins the push and pull that drives the book. Luce cannot keep away from Daniel, and Daniel does everything he can to make her. He is cold, then for a moment unbearably gentle, then cold again. He tells her to leave him alone. He turns up when she is in trouble. Every time she thinks she has imagined the bond between them, he gives himself away with a look. Meanwhile Cam keeps pursuing her, warm where Daniel is icy and always ready with an invitation, and Luce, lonely and confused, lets herself be drawn in. She kisses him, and dreams of Daniel. A triangle forms, and it grows more unsettling the longer it lasts, because the two boys plainly have a history with each other, and it is not a friendly one.

With Penn's help, Luce turns detective. Penn knows where the school keeps its secrets, and together the girls go spying into Daniel's past. What they find does not add up. The clues suggest that Daniel is far older than any high school student could be, and that the feeling Luce has of having met him before may be no fantasy at all.

All the while, Sword & Cross darkens around her. The shadows that have trailed Luce all her life are thicker here and bolder, and they seem bound up with whatever the school is hiding. There are drunken parties in the grounds, a vicious fight between two girls, a night at a bar that ends with fists. Then the fire comes again, and this time, too, somebody does not walk away from it. Innocent people are getting hurt, and Luce is always nearby. She begins to fear that she is the cause.

At last Daniel stops running. The truth he gives her is the one the title has been promising. He is a fallen angel, and he is not the only one at Sword & Cross. And Luce has not merely seen him before. The two of them have loved each other across century after century, in life after life, bound by a curse: each time she comes back, they find one another, they fall in love, and it destroys her. Then, years later, it begins again. He remembers every lifetime. She never does. His cruelty has been a desperate attempt to break the pattern by keeping her at a distance.

Only this time something has changed. Luce has got closer to the truth than she ever has, and she is still here. No one can say why. But it is enough to stir up both sides of a very old war, and it becomes clear that the students and teachers of Sword & Cross are not all what they seemed, or on the side they seemed to be on. Luce is no longer just a girl with a crush. She is a prize in a contest between heaven and hell, and as the powers gather for a reckoning among the gravestones, she has to decide whom to trust.

What It's Really About

The great theme is star-crossed love: the fantasy of a bond so strong that death cannot end it, and so dangerous that it should not be allowed. Kate adds a painful wrinkle to the old formula. Daniel carries the memory of every loss, while Luce meets him fresh each time. His aloofness, which might read as plain rudeness, turns out to be grief and guilt, and that knowledge gives the romance more weight than love at first sight usually has.

It is also about trusting yourself. Luce has spent her life being told that what she sees is not real. The story vindicates her instincts and suggests that following your heart, even when every authority says otherwise, can be the sane choice. And it plays with the question of who the good guys are. Its angels and demons do not sort neatly; some have changed sides, the charming one may be the dangerous one, and the kindly may not be kind.

Readers love it above all for its atmosphere. Sword & Cross, gloomy and rotting, is a Southern Gothic ghost story of a setting, and the book lingers in it. They also love the friendships: Penn, smart, brave and funny, is a favourite, and reviewers note that the novel gives more room to likable girls than many of its rivals do. And plenty of readers will tell you that Cam, with his danger and charisma, steals every scene he is in.

The criticisms are worth knowing too. The pace is slow for the first two-thirds, more mood and mystery than action. Luce is not the most forceful of heroines, the resemblance to Twilight is hard to miss, and the ending arrives in a rush and leaves many questions hanging. This is very much a first act, built to send you on to the next book.

Who Should Read It

This is for readers who love brooding heroes, forbidden love, gothic boarding schools and a slow burn, and for anyone nostalgic for the paranormal romances of the early 2010s. Its publisher recommends it for ages twelve to seventeen, and it is tame by the genre's standards, with little beyond kissing, some teenage drinking and smoking, and several frightening deaths. If you enjoyed Hush, Hush or Evernight, you will be at home here. Come prepared to read on: the first book answers just enough to make you need the second.