41. Passion

Book 41: Passion by Lauren Kate (A-)

This is the third book in the Fallen series, and I was slightly disappointed by it. It had the same vibe and carried true to the mood of the first two Fallen books, but this one was so repetitive.

Paul Bettany in the film Legion

Lucinda Price has pieced together from books one and two that her life and the ones before that are part of a never-ending curse. Her lover, Daniel, is a fallen angel who finds her life after life when she reincarnates to the appropriate ages, pursues her love, then she dies in a fiery explosion during the age of 17. It has a Twilight ring to it with the way their love is endless, desperate, and slightly scary. But Luce is no Bella Swan. In Passion, she questions this love she feels for Daniel and the love Daniel has for her. Is it real? Is she being manipulated? Is Daniel's love for the current Lucinda a new love or the returning love from a Lucinda of the past? With the help of a mystical figure in the physical form of a stone gargoyle, Luce travels through "Announcers" to several of her past lives to unlock the key to the curse and find out how to change it. Daniel, in the meantime, pursues her always a minute too late and recollects old memories, old conversations, and pieces together his own puzzle. At the end, they meet in at the beginning - the fall of Lucifer.
The ending was really the clincher for this novel. The description and thought put into Lucifer's Fall and the world of Heaven was beautiful and breathtaking. The beginning worked well too. But the middle... it was slow and repetitious. Chapter after chapter, the reader visits the past life of Luce and it's like the one you just read about. The gargoyle Bill steals her clothes that match the time period, she searches for her former self, she finds her former self, she finds the Daniel of the time, and tries to figure out what's going on. The only thing that really changes is where they are: Versailles, the Globe Theater, ancient Egypt...
The only breather between Luce's lives was Daniel's chapters, but they were also the same. Still, Daniel is a much more interesting character to a 20-year-old girl like me who loves true romance and an ultimate romantic hero. And, he's a beautiful, pure angel to top it off! In Daniel's chapters, his character deepens past the worried lover of Luce's who refuses to explain anything. You learn about the pain he goes through with each of Luce's deaths and how his relationship with supporting character and dark angel Cam became so tense.
Though Passion wasn't what I had hoped, I'm so happy some answers finally appeared. With the dark twist of an ending, I'm bouncing off the walls for the fourth and final novel, Rapture! It's coming out in 2012, and I can't wait!