I have always been a voracious reader. But I have not always been a critical one. I used to read books, love them while I was reading them, then more or less discard them - give them back to their owner or put them back on the shelf, never to be thought of again unless they REALLY made an impression on me. Fallen was a book I read five years ago at age fifteen. At the time I gave it four stars. Unfortunately I did not include a review, which may have enlightened present day me to why I seemed to enjoy it so much. I can hazard a guess - forbidden love story off the back of Twilight, paranormal elements, yadda yadda yadda. 
 My choice of Fallen for my blog's first Series Binge Read came from the fact I never actually finished this series. Goodreads said I read books two and three, but I can't remember them at all. Given the high rating my 15 year old self gave the books, I thought, what could go wrong? 
 A lot, it seems. 
 I was only a couple of pages in when I knew that I wasn't going to enjoy this. The writing was a bit all over the place, clumsy phrases, sentences I had to say out loud to see if they actually made sense. And the introduction of our judgmental heroine, who on her first day of reform school is making comments to herself and making passing judgments on other students she hasn't even spoken to, despite the fact that she herself must look an absolute treat with her hair half burned off and cut raggedly. I knew then that my reread of Fallen was not going to go well. 
 To keep track of my thoughts I made numerous status updates and tweeted as I was reading, something I'd never really done before but unfortunately this measures could not keep in check the frustration I felt at having to read such poorly written rubbish about an uninteresting and plain stupid heroine, a dude who gives her all the signs to piss off and her creepy stalker-like obsession with him for absolute no reason except that she's 'drawn to him'. And he's meant to be the good guy! 
 Need some context? Lucinda, or Luce, Price is sent to reform school Sword & Cross after a tragic accident involving a classmate from the prep school she used to attend. No evidence, no tangible proof, but she was there so she must be involved, so the solution is obviously to send her to reform school though nobody actually knows what she did. Who needs logic, right? In her first hour she meets the almost kind of wonderful Arianne, who needed more presence in this book, and spots Daniel, a gorgeous guy who gives her the finger. She doesn't even know him but yet, suddenly, she is obsessed. He flips her off and fifteen minutes later she's wondering where he is. To most people this sort of behaviour would shout "JACKASS" but not to Luce, who proceeds over the next week to stalk him obsessively, with the help of poor Penn who did nothing but just want to make a friend and instead got stuck with Luce. 
 Despite Daniel's repeated warnings that he wants nothing to do with her, Luce refuses to get the hint. She does stupid and dangerous things like get into cars with people she doesn't know to see a (different) boy she says she doesn't like but also thinks about when not obsessing over Daniel, and is just a pain to read about. There is also nothing significant that happens over the course of the book, except the drawn out revelation that Daniel is a fallen angel (not even going to bother writing SPOILER because honestly you should have worked that out already. You're not Luce) and then some angel fighting and stuff. 
 Daniel is an absolute idiot. He is the cause of all of this and he could stop it. Take himself far away to the ends of the Earth where his love won't cause Luce to die and reincarnate every seventeen years and he could stay the hell away from her and maybe not kiss her? But nope. It's like he doesn't even try. Surely if you loved her that much - for reasons unknown - maybe you would want to keep her alive by staying away! That's the other thing - we do not know why they're so in love, except for the fact that they were in love in Luce's previous lives. Both are obsessed with how good looking the other is and we are never given any tangible reason why their love should last, why it's better than anything else. But it's okay - he's hot. 
 What frustrates me most is that at times, Luce realises she is crazy and a stalker and stupid. But this does not cause her to change her behaviour in any way. She notices that he is 'aggressively rude and uninterested' in her so why does she pursue it? And it also becomes alright and forgotten about once the revelation that they're so in love. But it's not okay! She is crazy and needs to go to a real reform school. Why the hell are angels in reform school anyway, don't they have better things to do? 
 Like a lot of other readers who have given this book a low star rating, I too would have liked to see Luce killed by the villain because every word she spoke was 100% true. I don't know why the angels care about an insignificant human and to be honest, I don't care. I am really regretting this choice for my Series Binge Read but I will soldier on, like I did with Hush, Hush. Although my rating for Hush, Hush was higher even though I disliked both Patch and Nora, at least they had a cool fallen angel storyline. This book, so far, has nothing. 
 One down, four to go! 
 My series wrap up can be found on my blog, Crash My Book Party, under Series Binge Read.