Review: Torment By Lauren Kate

Torment (Fallen #2)

By: Lauren Kate

Hardback, 452 pages

Published September 28, 2010

Delacorte Books for Young Readers

From my personal collection

Synopsis (from Goodreads): Hell on earth. That's what it's like for Luce to be apart from her fallen angel boyfriend, Daniel. It took them an eternity to find one another, but now he has told her he must go away. Just long enough to hunt down the Outcasts - immortals who want to kill Luce. Daniel hides Luce at Shoreline, a school on the rocky California coast with unusually gifted students -Nephilim, the offspring of fallen angels and humans.

At Shoreline, Luce learns what the Shadows are, and how she can use them as windows to her previous lives. Yet the more Luce learns, the more she suspects that Daniel hasn't told her everything. He's hiding something - something dangerous. What if Daniel's version of the past isn't actually true? What if Luce is really meant to be with someone else? The second novel in the addictive FALLEN series . . . where love never dies.

*WARNING: ANNOYANCE AND SPOILERS MAY ENSUE*

My Thoughts: I pre-ordered this one over the summer with Halo by Alexandra Adornetto and Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick and all three managed to sit on my shelf from the moment I got them until now when I packed them up in my car and brought them home for Christmas break. I started and finished this one in one day, not because I loved it so much, but because I finally had the time to just sit down and read something. I actually didn't like this one as much as I thought I was going to. Luce annoyed me a little, just like she did in the first one. I thought that she jumped on this whole angel train just a little too fast in the first one and now to be dragged to a school across the country where she was forced to lie to everyone she loved, well I just didn't believe it. The only time that I liked her was when she started standing up to Daniel and showing him that by lying to her he was only making the situation worse. Luce came into herself when she was at Shoreline. It was nice to see her doing things on her own and breaking some rules that were not just for Daniel. I agreed that Daniel treated her like a child and that annoyed me as well. I just didn't feel connected to the whole thing. Everyone annoyed me except Miles and I felt like everything was kind of contrived to make something happen between the first angel battle and the one that is obviously going to ensue in the next book. I am still not sure how I feel about the book and about Daniel and Luce. I just don't know. And I think that was the problem I had. I knew how I was supposed to feel, but for some reason that I cannot explain, I didn't feel that way. Anyone have any thoughts? 

Would I recommend this to my 9th graders? Probably not. They might not be able to maturely handle the scenes between Luce and Daniel or understand the connection between them. Older students would probably do better. 

My rating: 3.5/5