Tormented by Lauren Kate

Title: Torment
Author: Lauren Kate
Publisher: Random House
Rating: WARTY!

So Luce is flown to San Francisco airport, which apparently has the absolute fastest baggage retrieval ever, because in no time Luce and Daniel - without whom she's a complete, utter, and very limp nothing evidently - are approaching Daniel's car, which is an Alfa Romeo, and which happens to be Luce's dream car. As Daniel informs her, it used to be her car in a previous life. Need we go into the Romeo Giulietta here and the fact that Kate actually used the term 'star-crossed lovers' in vol 1?!

Kate seems to have some sort of problem with plurals. She thinks biceps has a singular form! No, biceps relates to the number of skeletal attachments, not to the number of muscles! There is no 'bicep', just like there is no tricep! Sorry Laurie!

Next comes the magic - and it’s dangerous and uncalled for especially given that it's practiced by Daniel who is supposed to be keeping Luce safe: he shrinks her bag to fit into the trunk, an act of magic which apparently lights him up like a beacon to the evil powers that be. Then he spends a lot of time telling her that he can’t tell her anything. He does tell her that she's enrolled in a new school up the coast from SF, but I have to ask, what’s the point?! She's seventeen, She's in so much danger that he feels he has to hide her away in a camouflaged school (like The Evil One would have the Devil of a job trying to figure out where it is? Seriously?) But if she's going to be hiding away all her life, then what’s the point? How is she ever going to have a career? And if she isn’t, what, exactly, is she studying for? Angel University?!

When she asks him to tell her everything that he's been up to since they've been apart (for all of three days?! Just how clingy is this woman?) he babbles on about a 'Council of Angels' meeting'. Honestly? Where, exactly, is god?! I always thought he was supposed to be in charge! Is he being non-existent again? Because every time we hear of these religious stories, whether in book or film, it’s always the case that the god is useless and it’s entirely up to humans (or in this case humans, half-breeds and angels) to carry the day. God - who could protect her instantly and permanently - apparently has no interest whatsoever in this oh-so-special girl! As Al Pacino's character describes him in the excellent Devil's Advocate he's an 'absentee landlord"!

And what the hell airport did Luce land in? Kate describes the drive into the city over a roller-coaster of hills and dales, but the SF airport is right in the middle of the city on the shoreline! No hills. The city's right there; to get to Fort Bragg you drive north out of the city not into it! Was Kate doing angel dust when she wrote this?!

On the journey - however misguided it is, Daniel points out a mobile home park where Luce used to live in a two room cabin (so how in hell did she have her own room?!) long before it was a trailer park, but when she asks him about the first time they ever met, he makes like a clam again, so it isn't just Luce who's spineless. What a jerk Daniel is! Since Luce is the light and also his buddy, I think from now on I shall refer to them as Dani of El and his bud light...maybe not!

I don’t know where Kate gets this reincarnation from given her context. It’s not in the Bible. Yes, there are some delusional characters in there who question whether Jesus, for example, is the reincarnation of Elisha or Elijah or whatever, but the Bible is really one life and you're done, as unjust as that is in this context. In point of fact, it’s not until the NT that we even get an after-life! There's no such thing in the OT, and there's no mention of any scheme of reincarnation. That's not a Judaic idea at all.

As a special treat, Dani of El parks in Mendocino and literally flies Luce to Fort Bragg, or more specifically, to the protected grounds of the Shoreline school. She wakes up the next day to discover that she's sharing a room with an obnoxious 'Nephilim' (more on this anon) called Shelby who, for reasons unknown and unexplained, was evidently not told she was getting a roommate that night. Shelby wasn't actually there in the middle of the night as it happened, not arriving home until the wee hours of the morning, and then through the window!

So they go to breakfast. Luce notes that this place smells faintly of the ocean, but it’s not really like home - on the east coast? I don’t know what the deal is with that. She lived on the east coast when she was in the Dover school where her boyfriend burned, but her parents were living just a few miles from her school in Georgia, so what that's all about I have no good handle on.

As they reach the "mess hall" which is very well-appointed and suitable for rich kids, completely the opposite of Sword and Cross, Shelby reluctantly and snottily imparts that the school is home to a bunch of Nephil. On that topic, Hebrew words which end in 'im', such as Cherubim, are plurals. The singular in this case would be Cherub. Kate finally addresses the fact that Nephilim is a plural, having Shelby make cheap excuses for Kate's inappropriate use of the term. Not a bad idea - blame a character for your phobias and peccadilloes?! I must use that!

The startling thing to Luce, however, is that she's a celebrity here. She is spoken of almost reverently, and there's a certain amount of hero worship over her story: her reincarnations, her star crossed love, and her attachment to the hawt Dani of El. This, of course, begs the question that if every one of these people knows so much about her, why - in god's name! - has she been kept so resolutely in the frigging dark all this time?

Her first class is jointly conducted by a good fallen angel Jessica (isn't that a contradiction in terms?) and a bad fallen angel Steven (isn't that a tautology?) just to keep things fair! What? What's with the 'fair' crap? I thought all was fair in love and war and this is both! Oh well, go with the flow and see where we get washed up.

And the award for Best Split Word goes to Lauren Kate for her novel Torment where, on page 148, she splits 'demonstration' across two lines into demon-stration! That was hilarious! But unfortunately, Kate also gets the award for most obnoxiously and nauseatingly whiny-assed heroine ever. It’s really hard to have to keep on reading Luce's absolutely endless whining about how she can’t be with Dani of El. Who, in their right mind, would actually want to be with Luce in one lifetime, let alone across scores of them? Which decent self-respecting person would want to be with a clingy, helpless, whining, self-absorbed partner like her? Honestly? It's like every other thought that crosses her mind is about how much she wants to be with him and how unfair life is to her. It’s really hard to read those parts.

So why go on with this? Well tossed in with the tropes and pains is the occasional nice bit of writing and of plot development - and even humor1 rare, but there in tiny doses. Yes! The story itself isn’t so bad; it’s the protagonist who's a pain in the patootie. So I hope you'll forgive the occasional snark as this goes on!

So Luce starts getting to know someone called Miles (shouldn't that be Kilometers in this day and age?) and unloads a lot of her baggage onto him, but this does not a thing to improve her demeanor, not even by one iota. I'm actually suspicious of Miles, quite frankly. In one of their classes with Jessica and Steven, the two of them show the class how to unfold one of the shadows - called an 'announcer' - and see what's inside it. This makes no sense at all in context except as a ham-fisted plot device to give Luce something more to do on her own. Evidently shadows are like archived news clips from the history of the world. The one they see in class is Sodom and Gomorrah, and since these clips are from one's own life, this means that the teachers were actually at the destruction of those Biblical cities.

After that class, Luce goes to see Jessica to try and learn more about the shadows, and ends up outside her office eavesdropping on yet another partial discussion. She hides and sees Roland - of her time at Sword and Cross school - come out of the office, so she follows him and talks with him. He tells her nothing about what’s going on, and invites her to a beach party to which she goes and ends up meeting Daniel secretly. Daniel spends just a few minutes with her. He tells her nothing about what’s going on, and forbids her to leave the school under any circumstances, then he flies off. What a worthless jerk he truly is.

Arriving back in her dorm room, Luce finds an envelope under her door with a bus ticket and a typewritten note purportedly from Daniel, telling her to take the bus and meet him later than night. Not printed - typewritten! Luce, quite obviously by now the world's most monumental moron, stupidly, blindly believes it’s from Daniel, and she does exactly what she's told to do, ending up alone, near the fishing docks, in this deserted town very late at night. As she hears fishermen coming up from the docks (at that time of night?!), she backs into the shadows, and she sees Cam Briel, the bad guy from the previous novel, strolling by! He sees Luce and angrily asks her what she's doing there, then he throws her to the floor as an arrow flies over their heads. Next he's up and running to overpower the angel who tried to kill Luce, and he kills her with one of her own arrows. Then he drives Luce back to the school and tells her she cannot leave because of the extreme danger she's in! He tells her nothing about what’s going on.

So what does the biggest dipsquat in California do having been advised by both the "good' guy and by the "bad" guy to stay in school because she's in mortal danger?? She leaves the school again - twice! On the first of these occasions, she goes on a school trip on the luxury 130 foot yacht. Honestly? What 130 foot yacht isn't luxury? On this occasion it’s fortunate that she is there because Dawn, one of two ditzy friends Luce has made in addition to Shelby, is knocked overboard by a shadow, and Luce is the only one with the presence of mind to grab a life preserver and jump in after her. Something tries to pull Dawn under, but Steven comes after them in a raft and hauls her out of the water, ordering both of them to say nothing about this thing pulling them under, even as Luce watches welts rise up on Dawn's ankle, in the shape of fingers. Again, no one tells Luce (or Dawn for that matter) diddly squat about what's going on.

Next, Luce inveigles Shelby into helping her trap and look into a shadow. She's tried it before, by herself, and had no success, so this time she and Shelby do what they saw the teachers doing, stretching it out, and Luce is able to look in on one of her past lives. She sees her own picture, with Daniel, in a frame on a shelf, and notes a laptop computer and an address on an envelope. These were her parents in a very recent, previous life and she can go see them! Shelby steals her ex-boyfriend's Mercedes and they drive to Mount Shasta where they find the bungalow in which her older parents live, but while she can play peeping Tom in their window, she can't pluck up the guts to go talk with them.

So let’s review the story so far. In her entire time in Sword and Cross, which admittedly was problematical, Luce never once asked anyone to fill her in on what’s going on because she was so self-obsessed about Daniel and her so-called life. Now she's in a wonderful school, with decent, supportive people, all of whom know much more about things than she does, yet never once does she ask anyone there to fill her in on what’s going on because she's so self-obsessed about Daniel and her so-called life. Daniel, who is supposed to love her, never once fills her in on what's going on and she never asks because she's so self-obsessed about Daniel and her so-called life, preferring to act like a clueless thirteen year old, instead to taking the mature approach and taking charge of her life! And we’re supposed to what? Admire this girl? Root for her? Empathize with her? She makes me sick. She's the worst hero ever.

I'm committed to finishing this volume because as I said, the overall story itself is interesting, but the protagonist is utterly worthless. I've never quite been in this position before! I can see how people who are less discriminating and less demanding than I am might be addicted enough to plow through five volumes of this stuff, but I'm done after this vol, because I honestly don’t care what happens to Luce or to Daniel, and I think after two volumes I've given Lauren Kate more than a fair chance to win me over. I started out wanting to like it and trying to like it, but Lauren Kate has made far too hard to even want to like Loose Price! And if this is the best that 'angel stories' have to offer (at least as judged by how popular this series evidently is), then I can’t see why I should read any more of these no matter who has written them! Problematical as it was in parts, I'd recommend SJ Day's 'Eve of...' series over any series like this one. But it's not YA kosher! So maybe it’s really time to write one of my own?

Well Dani of El keeps on pumping up the jerk-o-meter. We learn that Shelby and he once had a one-nighter; and that's only the unfaithful act by him that Luce knows about Meanwhile Luce is still pursing her quest to rape the shadows for all they've got. She tries to capture a large sickly looking one, but Steve is spying on them and the shadow breaks up when she grabs it.

Right before that happened, she saw Cam in the forest, covered in blood, claiming he's just killed some of the Sophie assassins who were after her. None of that makes any sense. Sophie the Librarian had the entire book to kill her in vol one and did nothing. Now, suddenly, Luce needs to be taken out?!

Right after that incident, Luce is called into Steve and Jessica's office (where Jessica isn’t), and Steve talks to her about the shadows. He shows her a copy of a Plato book (which is illustrated! Lol!) and makes mention of Plato's remarks regarding how things look different when all you can see of them is their shadows. And people think this man was some sort of a great thinker?! But Steve's lesson is that shadows can be dangerous and she needs proper training if she's going to ignore the warnings she's been given, and go after them anyway. And we know by now that Luce is far too stupid a person to give any regard at all to warnings she receives, no matter who gives them to her and no matter how valid she knows for a fact that those warnigns are. No wonder she's always died young in her previous incarnations!

Dani of El keeps sneaking visits to his bud light, and each time he thrills her, tells her nothing, and hurries away. After being treated like dirt by him for a volume and a half, Luce is finally becoming a tad nit bit miffed. Hey, do you want to see a picture of Luce? Get a copy of the ancient and venerable Dictionary of Fallen Torment, and look up 'doormat'; there's a picture of luce right there.

So right after Luce's parents ask her if she can make it to their house for Thanksgiving that year, a hamfisted segue into an invitation from Miles drops into her lap and I'm guessing she's going to ditch her parents and take him up on it. Maybe her name should be Luce woman? We'll see.

Well I've finished this volume now and I have to say that I can't recommend this. Not only did Lauren Kate fail to pull it out of the fire, she torched it with napalm. The first volume was barely passable, but two volumes of non-stop whining by the female protagonist is two volumes way the hell too much. Two volumes of the female protagonist not being told anything by anyone and having zero spine to go find out; two volumes of failing to pursue questions (when she has prime opportunities to do so) which would help her to understand; two volumes of doing outright stupid things that put her friend's lives at risk, and two volumes of being so self-obsessed that even when she realizes what the stakes are, her every waking thought is: "What about me?" This is way too much to stomach. No one should be asked to put themselves through the torment of Luce Price's non-stop, juvenile self-pity parade.

Let's wind up the summary. So Luce starts falling for Miles. Daniel, even though he's treated Luce like crap and she should kick him in his angelic orbs and a ditch him permanently, goes into a sob-fest and a jealousy fit over it. Luce takes Shelby and Miles to Las Vegas through a shadow window even though she's been told endlessly that she cannot leave the school grounds because its dangerous and people can get hurt. Arriane rescues her from that. No one tells Luce anything and she never asks because she's so absorbed by how sad she is over Daniel, her loser boyfriend. Dawn, who looks superficially like Luce, especially after Luce becomes a peroxide blond, gets kidnapped and then returned unharmed for no reason! Luce determines she must talk with Dawn but never ever ever everjust often enough to make her feel wretched - and this jerk-off, no-good, clueless, heartless, piece-of-trash dipstick tells her nothing at all about anything.

Luce, who thinks she will not be able to leave the school grounds for Thanksgiving with her folks nevertheless lets her best friend Callie buy an airline ticket to join her with her parents! Fortunately for Callie, Luce finally gets permission to go, but has to go to Sword and Cross for them to pick her up, because she's been consistently lying to her parents - the parents she loves more than anything - about what's going on in her life. When she gets there for Thanksgiving, everyone and their uncle turns up - all the angels, including Molly who dumped meatloaf over her head in vol 1, and Cam, and several Nephilim and her best friend (to whom she's also told lies when she's actually deigned to contact her at all). The angels have a "fight" against the outcasts - basically zombie angels - and the angels win. Luce still asks no questions, and at the end, she claims she is taking charge of her life and promptly opens a shadow at random and steps blindly though it. How is this taking charge of her life by any definition?! It's casting her fortune to the wind, which is pretty much exactly what she's done since day one, only this wind is coming from the asses of angels

Seriously. That's how brain-dead stupid the ending to this novel is. The series is nothing but a massive helping of Luce sickly wallowing in how badly done to she is, in acting so stupid that she's more like an eleven year old than her age, in being told nothing and in failing to ask question which will reduce her ignorance even when she has golden opportunities to do so, and in doing illogical and pointless things which get actually her nowhere. From the reading I've done, vol 3 is nothing but Luce reliving her past lives by going through shadows. Who in their right mind wants to wallow some more with her in that? How is that going to help her address the current dangerous situation?

I don't care what happens to Luce or Daniel or any other character in this story. They can rot in hell for all I care because I have been given no reason to care and every reason to feel nauseous over the two main protagonists. What they have isn't love, it isn;t transcendent, it's a co-dependent blood letting and both of them need serious psychiatric help. This series is a mess and I refuse to waste any more time on it.

Fallen by Lauren Kate

Title: Fallen
Author: Lauren Kate
Publisher: Random House
Rating: WARTY!

I got so sick of hearing about the upcoming papal election (what, the finger of God not good enough for the new Pope?!) that I switched from NPR to a music station on the way to work this morning, and they were playing Scream and Shout, but it was the clean radio version, so instead of Britney Bitch, it was Britney Britney, but they had failed to remove the whispery ending to 'Bitch', so it sounded more like Britney Itch! I almost laughed out loud at this. What the heck does this have to do with this novel? Well, there's an itch in it, and she's not called Britney. She's called Molly. Molly? Yeah, Molly. And she's definitely not coddled, but she seems to have little to do with the action in the novel after this apart from popping up a couple of times to warn Luce off Daniel.

So Kate starts out with the usual trope of a new kid in high school (the Sword and Cross reform school - no kidding) and two hunks to compose the standard triangle trope. On this occasion, it would seem that Kate actually has a really good underpinning for the triangle, although the 'high school' bit makes no sense at all. Not so far, anyway and I'm about 35% in at this point.

Lucinda Price (interesting name! I actually dated someone called Lucinda once, and yes, there was a price.) aka Luce is immediately befriended by Arriane - a quirky, rebellious girl who carries the punishment of a wrist bracelet which shocks her when she misbehaves - like when she punches Meatloaf Molly for dumping her lunchtime meatloaf all over Luce because of a minor collision in the cafeteria.

Yeah, Luce! Could it be a more telegraphic name? So Molly, Arriane, and Luce all get punished with 'cemetery duty' at the crack of dawn the next day. Don't get me started on the injustice of this; I hated high school with a vengeance. Cemetery duty means cleaning the gravestones and walkways in a civil war era graveyard (the school is in Georgia, southern USA), but Luce and Daniel Grigori, hunk #1, actually trash it up! When they stop to chat under the lightning bolt angel, the angel crashes down over them. No one is injured, but rather than comfort Luce, Daniel simply walks away. He's so rugged!

A word about Daniel; from the first moment she lays eyes on him, Luce is dangerously attracted; she can't take her eyes off him, but he rejects her by giving her the finger the first time she sees him. After that he keeps sending on-again-off-again mixed signals to her which means that he's a jerk in my book. The only other competition is Cam, hunk #2 (Cam? Yes, Cam. How many Cams are we going to have to endure in these books for god's sakes, before we’re free of that frigging' name?!). Cam is a charmer, which immediately, of course means that Cam is evil incarnate and Daniel is the angel of light.

The name Daniel means 'judged of god' from the Hebrew: 'El' being the god part. Lucinda means light. Arriane is the French version of Ariadne, meaning 'most holy'. Either that or it's a French rocket. Molly is a diminutive of Mary even though it has more letters! No one knows what the hell it means although I favor the Egyptian derivation, where it comes from 'beloved' and has taken on a secondary meaning 'of the sea' from the Latin mare. In addition there’s a Todd ('Fox'), a Roland ('famous'), a Gabbe (Gabrielle - 'god gives strength') and a Penn. I actually know a Gabriela, and she;s called Gabby, too., Why would anyone ruin such a beautiful name with such a foul contraction?!

Cam invites Luce to a party in his room that night where Roland plays records. Yeah, not CDs, not an iPod, but records. And this was written in 2009. O-okay; just keep swimming.... The dorms are completely mixed, and whilst no one actually shares a room, the males and female are roomed right next door to each other. Given that is supposed to be a reform school, so strict that the students are deprived even of their cell phones when they arrive, how this works and how come not one single student or teacher seems to think that there's anything even remotely adrift with this housing scheme is a complete and utter mystery!

When Luce sees Daniel sneak out of the party, she makes a cheap excuse to follow him, so now Luce is a stalker. She overhears him talking to Gabbe and learns that there is something secret going on. Surprise, surprise!

If you didn’t figure out from the title that this is a novel about angels - Fallen angels - then you're more clueless even than I am! I don't normally real this stuff with angels and fairies - although I read a bit about Blackbringer the other day (no, not that day, the other one!) and I admit I was intrigued - but this particular novel sounded like it might be worth my time, and the first two volumes were right there on the library shelf, so I hope Kate won't let me down. There are five volumes in total so far, so if this turns out to be an acceptable read, I have more to look forward to. OTOH, if it's a disaster, I've lost nothing; nothing ventured, everything gained!

One more thing - I was tricked into reading the prologue in this novel, so props to Kate for finagling that. It looked like chapter one, I swear it did! The prologue consisted of a guy rejecting a girl in late Victorian England, and since Luce seems so familiar with Daniel, (hell for short, but not for leather), I guess they've met in a previous life (although how that works remains unexplained, one third the way in). I have to say that this annoyingly reminds me of my own Timeless for which I still don’t have an ending. But unlike Timeless, Fallen is about reincarnation and forbidden love. Timeless is about carnal love for the bidding (I ain't kidding!).

In short, I have to admit a bias against this kind of story. I don’t buy the religious thing at all, although it can make for great fiction, but I have especial problems with that fiction when it tries to make sense of something which is, intrinsically, nonsensical! Religion makes no sense at all except in the light of human ignorance, frailty, mortality, and superstition, so I have to confess a certain interest in what Kate will do with this material. So with that intrigue, and with her writing which is acceptably done so far fro my modest expectations, I'm prepare to suspend disbelief and go with the flow and see what kind of a tale she can tell.

One more detail. Luce was sent to this reform school for reasons which make no sense. This is a weak spot in Kate's plotting IMO. The ostensible reason for it is her lack of a solid grasp on reality (but ain't that religion all over?!). Why she would be sent to a reform school rather than some sort of psychiatric hospital is not explained. If she's not being punished for her boyfriend's death, why the reform school? If she faked herself out of psychiatric hospital why not a regular school? Luce was with a boyfriend - a kinda boyfriend - and she was about to kiss him when he burst into flames. Her memory of what happened is tenuous at best, so she blames herself for his death even though she has no idea of how she could be to blame. It didn’t help that she told people she can see shadows moving, and that bad stuff seems to happen when that happens. She still sees the shadows at her new school.

So medically speaking, she's being abused, but for the novel, she's exactly where she needs to be, but even that is problematical, because once again we have the problem: no one tells the protagonist anything! If only someone would explain to her that she's an angel, it would improve her life immeasurably. The cruelty involved in keeping this from her, especially by Daniel, is inexcusable and is a big turn off so far - unless, of course, Kate comes up with some rationale as to why she, a person of the light, should be kept in the dark! But let’s see how Kate does with this.

Waking up with somewhat of a hangover the morning after the party and recalling Gabbe's words to Daniel along the lines of "I'm the only one you've got" Luce acts like a 13 year old instead of the 17 or so years she's supposed to be and goes into a funk, but since she's shocked out of bed by a demand that all students report to the gym (a converted church) for physical assessment, she doesn’t have time to ponder it too deeply.

I have no idea what the physical assessment is all about because no physical assessment is actually given to the students. Each student is assigned one random physical task to complete, and Luce's is swimming. Even though she's not paying attention and starts off late, she swims like a dolphin and is all set to win the eight-lap sprint when she hears Gabbe say something about Daniel and stops dead in the water, thereby not only losing but proving herself a loser!

I don't know how long Kate plans on condemning her primary protagonist to this fate, but I can see it becoming really tedious after a while. And yes, I know that in real life there are genuine people who are depressed and who can't help their self, and who need and hopefully are getting the help they deserve, but something has gone wrong with Luce! She actually seems more depressing than she does depressed.

She outright asks Roland if Daniel and Gabbe are together, and he refers her to Daniel. She sees Daniel in the gym skipping rope and is abruptly flung out of the gym by those invisible (to everyone but her) shadows. She has to re-enter it to get her key, and ends up telling Daniel that she's sure they've met before. He assures her that they have not and she goes into another funk and fails to ask if he's with Gabbe! Seriously, Luce, tighten up!

Cam breaks her out of her self-pitying wallow-a-thon by luring her to picnic with him in the cemetery instead of going to class, but right when she and Cam are about to kiss, they're interrupted by Gabbe who tells them the teacher is asking for them in class. Of course, when they arrive, the teachers seems not to have even missed them. If Luce can't connect the dots between this with what she overheard between Daniel and Gabbe that dorkish stormy night, then she's not too smart: it would seem obvious that Daniel has asked Gabbe to keep an eye on Luce and keep her from getting too involved with Cam.

This class is conducted in the library by the librarian, whom Luce has met earlier and taken a liking to. She's supposed to be teaching religious history, so how this translates into her authorizing them 15 minutes on the Internet to research their family tree is a mystery. Luce, the worst student ever, blows this off, too, and researches Daniel Grigori instead, but we learn nothing about what she found (if anything). Why she did not also use the opportunity to email her best friend from her previous school is another unsolved mystery given how much she wailed earlier about not being able to be in constant texting contact with her.

That Saturday morning, Luce is visited in her room by Penn who snoops around and then asks Luce if she wants to come and dig through Daniel Grigori's records, to which Penn, for reasons unknown, has access. After declaring that she really doesn't need another reason to be labeled a crazy stalker girl, Luce goes right along with Penn to snoop, but comes up with nothing on the boy. The only thing she achieves is to run into Molly again and discover that Molly knows about what happened with her crispy boyfriend.

As she follows Molly outside and sees her talking with Gabbe, which she hates, she's hit on the head with a soccer ball, but at least it gives Daniel another chance to be a complete jerk, and Luce learns that he doesn't have a girlfriend, so she can stop hating Gabbe. Then Daniel invites her to go for a walk. This is the guy who is evidently trying to avoid her to keep her from harm, and now he's associating with her. He's a complete moron.

They walk through the woods to a lake and swim - not naked, to a rock out in the middle where they sit and talk, and Daniel lies to her that he was burned by a girl and isn't looking to get involved in a relationship. I have no knowledge that it's a lie, I just feel like it is: just another ruse to keep her away from him. This might make it seem like he's not such a jerk, but it makes him worse. He should simply tell her the truth, but again he lies to her. Then he says he has to be somewhere and leaves her on the rock, swimming back across the lake at record speed, and as he gets out of the water on the other side, his body silhouetted in the sunlight, the water droplets dancing around him Luce swears they look like wings. No really?!

So Luce is dragged to the library later that night by Penn who says she has found a book written by Daniel's grandfather, but the book isn’t on the shelf. Penn leaves Luce by the shelf and goes to ask the librarian where the book might be. Suddenly there's a bright flash - curiously right by where Penn was supposed to be going - and the smell of burning arises, with choking smoke filling the library. Luce grabs Todd, the only other person in there, and they try to find Penn and the Librarian, but cannot make it that far. They have to leave, and are hurrying down a corridor filled with smoke, Todd almost panicking, when Luce feels like she's being carried along. Suddenly she and Todd are outside, but a shadow smacks into them hard, knocking them down the steps. Luce passes out.

And awakens in a hospital bed with Gabbe giving her a manicure! Arriane turns up with drinks (alcoholic drinks!), and then Penn shows up. Soon the police and her parents and a lawyer for the school arrive. Todd is dead and they know about Luce's past. Luce pretty much tells it like it was and they leave, but she doesn’t get to go home with her parents. Back at school she's dreading things happening as they did after the last death, but although she gets a lot of looks, nothing more happens.

At the memorial service for Todd in the cemetery, Cam hugs her and suggests that they get out of there, but she doesn’t want to go with him. Immediately afterwards, she takes off with Daniel to the lake again. They sit and talk this time, and she tells him all about the shadows she sees, thinking he'll think she's insane, but he's interested. Right when he says, "This has never happened before," and asks her to tell him about the shadows again, leaning towards her rather intimately, Luce closes her eyes expecting a kiss which never comes! She opens her eyes to find that Daniel has gone, but she can see a curious violet trail where he left.

So is Daniel the world's biggest jerk-off or what? Here was a golden opportunity to ease her mind and tell her everything, explaining what’s happening, and why, and he abandons her again! What a loser! Maybe she's meant to be with him, but if she honestly feels that, after all he's put her through, she's a bigger loser than he is, and she deserves exactly what she gets. I'm sorry but that's the way it is. What are young girls to learn from reading this? That it’s okay - even admirable - to love a guy who treats you like crap and shares nothing with you?!

Unless this story descends into an unsightly morass, I'm committed to finishing it and to reading vol 2 since I already have it, but only if it continues through the rest of this vol (I'm roughly 65% the way in at this point) and into vol 2 without sinking any lower! Daniel is seriously pissing me off right now, and Luce is starting to annoy me with her limp ways. I'm beginning to wonder if Luce is short for 'loosely wrapped'.

The next Saturday is 'Parents Day', and Luce, her mom and dad have a picnic and then take a guided tour of the cemetery (I'm not making this up! Kate is!). When Luce's parents leave, Penn asks her if she will go with her to visit her parents - at the cemetery, where she encounters Daniel sitting morosely on top of a monument! Can we wad this up with any more existential angst?

So Cam next lures Luce out of the school grounds where they meet in a sleazy bar and Cam gets into a fight. Daniel shows up and rescues her. Is Luce stupid or what? Frankly, I don't get her and Cam at all. Why she's interested in him is a mystery, but I get Daniel even less, knowing he could save her from this and he fails repeatedly to do so. Then Cam and Daniel get into a fight in the library. Eventually Daniel asks Luce to come with him to the lake where he tells her a really poor version of the truth: he's immortal and she's reincarnated every 17 years, and she a;ways finds him and as soon as they kiss she turns to ashes and he can't handle it. But they do kiss and she doesn't turn to ashes, which is what's different this time. Later, the librarian is very interested in this event.

So they all decide to go down to the cemetery where they encounter a glow arising from the center, which turns out to be the smackdown between Cam and his giant insect hoard, and Daniel, Gabbe and Arriane, who fight with glowing butterflies. Or something. But Luce isn't allowed to be there so Miss Sophia (the antiquarian librarian) and Penn all head off to another place in the school where Sophia slits Penn's throat, but Daniel arrives and Sophia escapes, so all is well.

Well I've finished the first two volumes of this now and I have to say that I can't recommend this. Not only did Lauren Kate fail to pull it out of the fire, she torched it with napalm. The first volume was barely passable, but two volumes of non-stop whining by the female protagonist is two volumes way the hell too much. Two volumes of the female protagonist not being told anything by anyone and having zero spine to go find out; two volumes of failing to pursue questions (when she has prime opportunities to do so) which would help her to understand; two volumes of doing outright stupid things that put her friend's lives at risk, and two volumes of being so self-obsessed that even when she realizes what the stakes are, her every waking thought is: "What about me?" This is way too much to stomach. No one should be asked to put themselves through the torment of Luce Price's non-stop, juvenile self-pity parade.

I don't care what happens to Luce or Daniel or any other character in this story. They can rot in hell for all I care because I have been given no reason to care and every reason to feel nauseous over the two main protagonists. What they have isn't love, it isn;t transcendent, it's a co-dependent blood letting and both of them need serious psychiatric help. This series is a mess and I refuse to waste any more time on it.