Fallen by Laury Falter

Author: Lauren Falter

Goodreads Rating: 3.93

Pages: 272

Format: Finished Copy from TLC Book Tours

Fallen - the first book in the Guardian Trilogy...
Maggie is unaware of the terrifying fate that awaits her. It isn’t until she lands in New Orleans for a full year at a private high school and her unknown enemies find her does she realize that her life is in danger.
As a mystifying stranger repeatedly intervenes and blocks the attempts on her life, she begins to learn that there is more to him than his need to protect her and that he may be the key to understanding why her enemies have just now arrived.

I got this book from the author as part of the blog tour for this book. When I got this book in the mail, there was a wonderful letter from the author which I wholly appreciated. She told me that she saw that I had just finished reading Fallen by Lauren Kate and that she was aware that there were similarities between the two books with the same title. For me the similarities basically ended. The only other real coincidence (or similarity) is that our main character in both books keeps dying because of the man that she loves. Sure there are angels, but I don’t really see that as one of the major points in this book.

I’m giving this book extra points for being more original than two angels that cant be together because they fell from heaven together. In this book, Maggie doesn’t appear to be a fallen angel, but rather someone that communes with the dead. I really admired Maggie’s altruism towards her gift. Rather than use it to really push a profit, she did it because it made the people she was communing with happy as well as the people that had messages to give. I know that there are people in my life whom I would love to give a message to, and who I would love to hear from. I found it really neat that she set up a booth in New Orleans to ply her craft so that she could reach more people. (And I’m sure have some more money. I did feel that Maggie was a little blind to something that were right in front of her face that as a reader you pick up on very quickly, I wish that she had been a little quicker on the uptake, but sometimes people do miss things that are right in front of their faces.

I wasn’t really a big fan of Eran when we were first introduced to him. He was mysterious to the point of just being annoying. He would be there and then suddenly disappear which was really annoying and I could only imagine how Maggie felt about that. I do wish that he had just been up front with Maggie about what was going on and what was happening to her so that she wasn’t so confused all the time. I know that in the Lauren Kate book its because they want to avoid killing Luce, but in this book I really saw no point to keeping her in the dark, all it seemed to do was lead Maggie into really dumb situations that could have been avoided had she known why this was happening to her.

I felt that some of the phrases were a little over used, and I know there are only so many ways that you can say that someone’s presence made “the hairs on the back of your neck stand up” but after the fourth time it happened, I just wanted to say enough already. Her physical reaction to certain people was one thing that I wish that Eran had explained to Maggie in order to avoid all of these situations. As annoyed as these things made me, I did really like that this was factored into the book that because of who she was she was able to sense her enemies, of course, the flip side of that was that they sensed her too.

I wish that Maggie had had a girlfriend in the midst of all that happened. I felt that because the only friend she really had were ghost boy (Eran) and her “roommates” (Who were honestly her guardians). Maggie was missing a kick ass side kick to help take some of the stress off of what was happening to her. It was also strange that in this book Mr. Warden, her principal didn’t seem to notice that there was this sudden influx of students with no parents to his school, which was strange (I’m talking like 5 kids). What was also strange was how against her all of the teachers were, everyone of them seemed to have it out for her just because of the stereotype of her driving a motorcycle. While you could say that it would be a cliché to have one teacher on her side, The fact that everyone of her teacher seemed to sneer at her seem like Falter was trying to hard to stray away from the cliché. I think that had she added a sentence like “At least my calculus teacher gave me a smile” rather than seeming like they were all ganging up on her.

My other concerns were with the small amount of instalove which came back to Maggie all of the sudden deciding that she was in love with Eran after he explained a little bit of what was going on with her. I wish that there had been more of a development of her feelings for him. I can totally understand that he was way in love with her, but the other way around was a bit much. My last concern was more of a personal tweek which was that the names in this book were just so unusual. What is wrong with the name John? Or Aaron? Or Sally? I know that they are really boring, but I feel as though authors in general try so hard to come up with really cool different names that they don’t take into account how strange they really are. If this was a real American private school you can bet that a name like Achan or Gershom will get quite a few stares.

All in all, it was a decent book, just a few tweeks, like a school nurse doing sutures with anesthesia and then the school not calling her guardians and a few other things that just needed clarifying. I will note though that the school nurse thing is just one of my little quirks, in both public school and parochial school, my nurses offered me a cough drop after telling them that I just threw up. School nurses are supposed to be good at calling parents, not sewing you back together.

The Courts Decision: