Author: Lauren Kate
Series: #2 - Fallen
Format: Hardcover
Release Date: September 28th, 2010
My Rating: 3.0 out of 5.0
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.
My Review:
Torment, I kinda knew what I was expecting when I started reading this and from the previous book. Torment picks up shortly after where Fallen left us, and Luce is headed to a new school (go figure), where the kids aren't all what Luce expects they would be. However, the book was generally good and there was some appeal that I got out of the end of the book, it was the middle of the book that I had a huge glaring issue with.
In Torment, Luce goes from the girl in Fallen who is thrown for a loop when she's told about who she is and who she is in love with to this girl who is so dimwitted and even mockingly stupid that I almost wanted to kill her. There are so many times when I screamed at her to connect the dots, there's a reason Daniel isn't telling you certain things so you'll find them out and won't have everything spilled do you. I enjoyed the ending though, the best thing I can say is Luce grows a backbone.
Now Daniel is the other issue I have in this book. He's too shady, there is too much mystery surrounding his character in this book, and I felt more pushed away and hurt by his actions toward Luce than actually being drawn in or even the whole character building phase. It was as if he was trying to distance himself from her, and well he wasn't, more or less trying to be protective. As well, there were plenty of times where Daniel would get ready to reveal a life changing story, and than regress backwards to a "I cannot tell you" sort of thing, and it got old really quick.
Then in this book, there started a Love Triangle that I think Luce didn't mean to get involved in. I think genuinely her character is more monogamous than she lets on, and I enjoy that in a good female character, one who isn't afraid to make a choice (in men or anything) and stand by it. However, she does regret what she did to Daniel and doesn't question their love, but because of how much Daniel pushed her away it was to be expected I guess. Anyways, near the end she just isn't sure how she feels about Miles and that I find grating and very unlike the character I enjoy in Luce.
I overall liked the book, it was okay. I have to admit I am enjoying the series so far, okay it's not my favorite or let alone close to some of the books that I enjoy. However, there is something about the tale of a never-ending love story that just gets me every time, maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic in that way. I just couldn't rate this higher than Fallen for the reason that the characters seemed to take a giant step backwards and I didn't seem to enjoy their growth through this book, and wished things went back to the way they did in Fallen.
