This post is spoiler-free.
Fallen is a book that I’d had on my To Read list for a while. I saw it on the shelf at the bookstore and read the jacket summary, but wasn’t very impressed. So, I left it on my future reads list and didn’t decide to read it until several weeks later.
This is a young adult novel that begins, honestly, like a romance novel. I was pretty surprised, as I knew it’s a YA novel. There’s nothing graphic but the prologue does have a bit of spice to it–mild spice, maybe? 
We are then introduced to the main character, a teenage girl named Luce (short for Lucinda). She’s the newest student at Sword & Cross, a reform school for troubled teens. Sword & Cross seems more like a prison, but Luce quickly makes friends–and a few enemies. Enter Daniel Grigori, the stereotypically handsome, mysterious, and seemingly otherworldly guy. Luce is, of course, drawn to him immediately. But Daniel seems to have some type of grudge against Luce, despite the face that they’re strangers.
I’ll leave the descriptions there. The book moves at a nice pace–I wasn’t bored and even stayed up late because I didn’t want to put the book down. Something that distracted me at first (and this is a very minor nitpick), but the font size is larger than normal for a standard hardcover. Initially, I felt like I was reading a large print edition, but I got used to it pretty quickly.
There were a few plot twists that I guessed ahead of time, but there was one in particular that I didn’t see coming. It’s nice to be surprised sometimes! Also, the climax of the book has a very Harry Potter-esque feel to it, though that was certainly unexpected as well.
I’ll stop here before I spoil anything. As much as I’ve said, it still doesn’t really scratch the surface of Fallen. This is a nicely layered novel, especially for a YA book. There’s a forthcoming sequel, Torment, scheduled for an autumn 2010 release. I’m looking forward to it.
