Passion

I don't really think this book needed to exist. I think this book is a terrible book that had no reason to exist, but instead this book just exist to do time travel shenanigans. A thing that I am not fond of in general and thus this book is superfluous in my eyes.

It's kind of a hybrid between a clip show and let's explain the plot that we skipped over explaining in the last two books kind of thing. Lucine gets to go back through time and see all of her past lives and see all of the time she spent with her beloved Daniel and try and understand how they even came to be together. Sounds reasonable? Right? Yeah, it's not.

Each chapter can be dissected down into a simple sentence Lucina is in a different time, a different location, and show more hopping place to place. In a picture book this would be really pretty but kind of useless. Here it's really just... description porn? It's there to tell us all about the world around her but I don't care about her, and I don't care about her world so I don't know what the point of it is. Like congratulations you're now in jerusalem? I don't care.

In a odd way this book whitewashes the characters because in past lives they were not White characters they were different races and depending on the life that she views she sees them as a different ethnicity. I never really expected that. But we get to find out Lucina and Daniel were once colored people.

The most confusing part probably has to be that she was alive and times when baptism didn't exist so why is baptism the thing that lets her come back to life when clearly she was around before it? It's little things like that to stand out to me.

At one point it's World war one or two and Daniel meets her and she's 13 and he doesn't return her feelings until she's of age. Ew. I don't want to think about that. "Young and lovely, innocent and saucy." *Gags into my own mouth*
That's actually in the book!? Gross!

This book, because of the time travel, automatically gets really messed up and doesn't make any sense - like when she enters the past, he should have memories of seeing her in the past, but he doesn't. There's a lot of little things like that that I can't overlook. I can barely overlook the fact that Daniel is a massive narcissistic abuser and this book makes it so obvious that he is not a good match for her. I don't even like her, and I don't want her to be with Daniel. This relationship has been doomed by this book. This one book alone shows that he is a narcissist and an abusive man and should not be with her.

Daniel doesn't love lucina, he loves the relationship he has with her. And. Whenever she tries to change her looks, change her hair, do anything she wants, he gets mad because she's altering the relationship.
Disgusting.

1 star. show less

Thank you Lauren Kate for making this book 10 times better than the first two. I really can't explain why it is that I even continue to read this series. I'm quite happy that there is only one more and hopefully ALL of the questions are actually answered in the last book because very little (if anything) was answered or explained further in this book.

THANKFULLY this book was SO MUCH MORE interesting than the first two. This one didn't go ON AND ON trying to explain the way Luce felt about Daniel and whether or not their love was something real or comparable to eachother's. This plot was actually quite interesting in the ways through which we traveled backwards through time with the characters and were able to see different versions of show more Luce and Daniel. One thing that I had a hard time with was the idea that Luce was able to speak the language of anywhere she went where her past lives had lived. She knew the words to stay and how to say them in French, Chinese, whatever language they speak in Tibet, plus languages that don't exist anymore that people aren't able to speak (Mayan... really?). If she was so magically able to speak ANY or ALL of these languages, she should (in my opinion) be able to remember just a little bit more information about ANY of her past lives. Plus, I still don't quite understand the concept of 'cleaving' because they did such a poor job describing the act and all that it entailed and honestly all I could think about whenever the word was brought up was "cleavage".

So with all that said, I give this book a 3. The plot was really interesting and I almost wish there were more different versions of herself that we could have seen and encountered with Luce. Obviously it wouldn't make sense to make the book much longer than it was, but I think I most enjoyed the whole concept that the book had (moving backwards through time to try and understand the love of Luce and Daniel throughout the ages... the when, where, why, what, and how). Sadly a lot of the questions you had at the end of book 2 (dear God book 2 was so awful, so maybe it was actually book 1 that you had tons of questions after)were not answered to much if any satisfaction and in some cases, this book might have opened up a whole NEW batch of questions for you (as it did for me). With that said, the characters were INSANELY shallow and there was little to no character development. Luce might have been able to figure out a little more about the way she felt about Daniel... but duh, she loves him forever and always and there's no way that you couldn't have caught that from the first two books. I think Daniel figured something out about himself throughout his own travels backwards through time, but his thoughts and their significance were extremely difficult to follow so I pretty much gave up on that and tried to focus on the time period and the random interesting tid bits of information the author had. show less

I'm a bit surprised at myself. I've finished this one rather quickly, only taking a day and a half to read it. Scarily enough, I don't know if Lauren Kate's writing has pulled me in or I'm just keen to get it all over with. Because I tell you what, I'm getting sick and tired of Luce and Daniel and angels and all their goddamn (excuse the pun) drama.

At the end of Torment, Luce races off into an Announcer without any thought as to what she's doing or where she's going, leaving everyone shouting after her and in a rush to follow her to wherever and whenever the hell she's going. No surprise then that in Passion, Luce is just as thoughtless as ever. I have no idea why Daniel, Miles, Shelby & co all decided to chase her down, especially when show more Daniel was the only one to finally catch up with her. It took him for freaking ever and I hated his chapters even more than I hated Luce's. And guess what? At the end of all the crap we still don't know anything other than Luce falls for Daniel over and over and over again. But we don't know why. I actually can't believe that it will take until the fourth book, nearly 2000 pages into this series that we find out why they fall in love (I assume we will find out then?)

This time travel thing was possibly the worst plot device ever. It was so ridiculous to follow. And I swear if I had read the word 'destiny' one more time I would have thrown the book through the window, a la Bradley Cooper in The Silver Linings Playbook (I love that scene). How is it that none of the angels could remember something clearly so important? They all just developed bad memories or something? I know it was a long time ago but still that was kinda important and the whole reason this thing keeps happening. There are too many plot holes. Luce's personality changes every reincarnation. If you have the same soul each time, wouldn't you have the same personality? It's like Daniel is in love with a different girl each time, no wonder he doesn't get bored. Why is she rich and/or privileged in so many of her reincarnations? One time she was a slave. Big deal. And how does Daniel change his appearance almost completely every time depending on where Luce turns up?

You know, I was under the impression that Daniel accidentally finds Luce every time. That's not true. He seeks her out. Who does that? So you love her. And because you love her, she dies. Wouldn't that make you think, stop looking for her? Stop seeking her out and let her live a normal life! See why I am not convinced of their love? Luce gets so jealous all the time, to the point where she is jealous of the ground Daniel walks on and the relationships her past selves had with past Daniels, even though she always dies! She is ridiculously self-obsessed and I cannot believe that I couldn't read a single page without a mention of Daniel. What about your parents? What about Callie? What about Shelby and Miles? What about Trevor, Todd, Penn - the people whose deaths you are responsible for? Nope. Nothing else matters to Luce. And every time a character in this novel bagged out Luce and Daniel's relationship (Bill, Satan, Lucifer, whatever) I agreed. I totally agreed because this book is full of ridiculous trope. Paranormal is cool, but your book sucks when the relationship is not believable. show less

Daniel Grigori: Put’s Edward’s love for Bella to shame. Yes, that’s a bold statement, but after reading this particular book in the FALLEN series by Lauren Kate, I think you’ll agree with me.

When we pick up on this, the third book of FALLEN, Luce has just carelessly entered an announcer because she needs to travel to her past to discover if her Love for Daniel is true, and if he Loves her the same, or if the two of them are just ‘going through the motions’ because their fates have been pre-determined. At the end of book two, TORMENT, Luce’s doubts could be understood. Daniel had not given her any answers and as frustrating as that is, we find out why in PASSION.

The author, Lauren Kate does a wonderful job at holding show more back just enough information to keep the reader intrigued and providing just enough to satisfy. PASSION is written from alternating POV’s, switching between Luce and Daniel. In hearing Daniel’s side of the events, we know, before Luce does, how deep his love really is. The ending of PASSION leaves the reader satisfied to the point that the Love-story could end with this book, but for the action perspective and the fates of Luce and Daniel, RAPTURE, the fourth and final FALLEN novel due out in Spring 2012, cannot come out soon enough. show less

After the action in Fallen and (more so) in Torment, Passion is a bit of a let down. Luce explores her past lives in search of evidence of Daniel's love for her. We learn more about their shared past and see the various personas that Luce's soul took on in the past. Passion is about Luce exploring the past, settling her feelings, and realizing the truth. In fact, in addition to Luce rekindling her passion with Daniel, there is only one other major plot development.

Still, Passion is a necessary transition book in the series, and I enjoyed it in its own way. At first, I thought that I would get bored of watching Luce leap through her past lives, as she left the first couple pretty quickly. Once I adjusted to the pacing of the novel, show more however, I found myself just as mystified as Luce by her past lives, and as the novel progressed, I saw how they tied in together. The Announcers take Luce to certain lives for a purpose--there is something for her, for us, to learn.

I was annoyed by Luce's incessant desire to speak with her past lives and warn them--to tell them what she would have liked to know before starting her relationship with Daniel. It seemed obvious to me that if she changed one life, then her own life would be in jeopardy... though I can't blame her for wanting to try. If I knew as much as Lucy did when she first started her journey into the past, I would have hated to watch past me's die without understanding what they're getting into. Oddly enough, I was amused rather than confounded by Daniel's interference with the past despite his knowledge of what will happen if he interferes; this is probably because, unlike Luce, he knows what he's doing most of the time.

Everything leads back to Daniel's decision to live for love. In Passion, we learn the depth of Daniel's love for Luce, and we learn why the present Luce has a chance at life. With Luce finally understanding her relationship with Daniel, they only need to prove that it is worth fighting for (and take down the big bad guy). I cannot wait to read Rapture and find out how it all ends! show less

A romance for (or should I say through) the ages!!!

In Passion, Lauren Kate takes us with Luce through a journey of all her past lives--death after death after death. Even though you'd think it would be just heartbreaking to see Daniel lose Luce over and over again, it was really more heartwarming. It reminds you of how their loves has to conquer death and evil and betrayal over and over again.

But this isn't just a journey for Luce, this journey also takes Daniel back to the darkest days of his past. We see how his character grows and changes and never gives up on love. I love Daniel for his perseverance (and it doesn't hurt that he's a hottie).

I do really wish that there would have been more spine-tingling romance. At times, it felt show more like it was the same thing chapter after chapter. (view spoiler) But, I still flew through the book in a day--so it couldn't have been that jaw-wrenching. I will admit, I did skip over whole paragraphs at times because Lauren Kate is entirely too detailed in some aspects of her writing.

Still, if you're a Fallen fan (or an angel fan or a hottie fan or even an evil fan), don't miss this book! show less

So I haven't read through Em's Review yet, but she did text me to say that she was disappointed/didn't really care for this book that much. I couldn't disagree with her more on that line of thinking.

Though some people may find this book of the Fallen Series to be a little "repetitive" (as far as Luce going back in time and her "loves" with Daniel), I found it enchanting and was thrilled to see their love throughout so many lifetimes. In the first two books, much like Luce, I was told over and over again how epic their love was, but I didn't want to be TOLD about it - I wanted to witness it firsthand. And traveling to all those different times and places all over the world was pretty damn cool. Props to Lauren because I'm sure that took show more some serious research.

Also, if you like the supporting cast (even half as much as I do..which is ALOT) then you might be missing them because they aren't in this story as much. But you DO get to witness a critical moment for Cam..whom I love love love. I'm aware that the story is mainly about Luce and Daniel's great love, but my great love is for Cam. :)

Of course, I can't write a review without mentioning a new character - Bill. I found him to be like the stand-in for Cam as far as (hilarious) sarcasm. Em texted me telling me she thought he was creepy, but I thought he was funny. And he said more than a few things that I agreed with. Ahem - "There is more to life than teenage passion." I know, I sound like a parent..but looking back on my high school days, I must say that things I thought were "so important" - like a high school boyfriend - really aren't that big in the grand scheme of things. I realize Daniel and Luce are different but the quote is fairly accurate overall.

If you were looking for Passion to be the climactic ending of the story with Rapture being some kind of epilogue filler, then I'm not sure what to tell you. I guess I knew what to expect from Passion and that's why I wasn't like "What the heck - Where is all the "action"? Where is the epic battle?! This is boring." That's not what this book was about - this book was about Luce and the Reader understanding what the hell was going on and setting everyone up for the final showdown.

You'll enjoy this book as long as you realize that this was not meant to be the action-packed finale. show less