Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Take a look at the cover. Look at it. Do you see that lady covering her face with her hands? That's me after reading this book. Why? Why did I read this book? I AM FILLED WITH SHAME AND REGRET. Again, we have another *Twilight* clone, but this book makes *Twilight* look like the Great American Novel. Reading this book is like entering a kind of prison where you are forced to hear every inane thought of the most shallow, dimmest girl in the world. Actually, it's not *like* that. It IS that. Luce, our heroine, has been sent to a reform school because a boy, like, spontaneously combusted at her fancy boarding school, and she was the only witness, so the police think she was somehow involved. *Fallen* follows Luce's year at this reform school, wherein she carefully examines the cuteness and dateability factor of every boy she encounters. Of course there's a *dark, tortured* guy who immediately attracts her attention. He flips her off when he catches her looking at him, so naturally she instantly falls for him. In fact, she becomes creepily stalkerish, using her one sort-of friend to steal his school file so she can learn more about him. The pacing is abominable. We get more than 300 pages of nothing but "OMG he's cute, does he like me? Why doesn't he like me? Oh there's another cute boy! Is he cuter than Daniel? I don't know! Oh, what shall I do? Oh no, another boy caught on fire!" We are mired in boy-crazy teenage-girl minutiae and Luce's increasingly bad decisions. Then the final 30 or so pages are filled with many WHAT THE WHAT moments, hugely telegraphed plot points, and jam-packed with mysteries with no explanations only as an excuse to continue this drivel through not one, but two more books. Oh, we do get one explanation--a total "secret villain spends three or four pages talking about his/her diabolical plan and recapping everything [nothing] that has happened in the book so far" maneuver--but we wish we hadn't. In addition, are we supposed to swoon over Daniel because he's broody and a bad boy? Not to spoil what happens in the book (since so very little happens), but given what Daniel knows about Luce and him and the history of them together, he is exceptionally selfish, or stupid, or both. The writing itself is laughably bad. My favorite bad line might be: "Luce could hear the squish of her own mortification as all of Sword & Cross got its viewing of the meat-loaf-coated new girl." Yes, you read that correctly: THE SQUISH OF HER OWN MORTIFICATION. I realize this book falls under "paranormal romance," but pretty much nothing in this book is believable. And now let me once again mimic the cover image of this book, by hiding my face in my hands. Do you hear that sound? That's the squish of my mortification.