Review: Torment by Lauren Kate

Description: Hell on earth.

That's what it's like for Luce to be apart from her fallen angel boyfriend, Daniel.

It took them an eternity to find one another, but now he has told her he must go away. Just long enough to hunt down the Outcasts - immortals who want to kill Luce. Daniel hides Luce at Shoreline, a school on the rocky California coast with unusually gifted students: Nephilim, the offspring of fallen angels and humans.

At Shoreline, Luce learns what the Shadows are, and how she can use them as windows to her previous lives. Yet the more Luce learns, the more she suspects that Daniel hasn't told her everything. He's hiding something - something dangerous.

What if Daniel's version of the past isn't actually true? What if Luce is really meant to be with someone else?

The second novel in the addictive FALLEN series...where love never dies.

Language: Mild

Violence: Mild

Sexual: Mild

   Torment, unfortunately, is one of those second novels where not much happens until the last hundred pages. I feel that this book could have been three quarters shorter and be a more satisfying read than I found this four-hundred and fifty-two pages of mostly filler to be. I don’t like downgrading novels and I hate writing bad reviews for them, but let me begin with my rant before I move on to things that I enjoyed.

   Something that annoyed me repeatedly was how Daniel and Lucinda would kiss and then get into a huge fight, solve this said fight with kissing, and then start all over again. Another thing that was aggravating was the fact that their relationship was more physical than mental, in my opinion, and how everyone seemed to throw the word love around as if it were a game of catch. Everything seemed to be the same in this book, and I was left feeling a bit exasperated that nothing important really happened until the very end, which didn’t exactly blow my mind either.

   So yes, this book has flaws. Do I regret reading this? Maybe the first few hundred pages. Will I continue the series? As I have the last two books already and I am still curious to see how the story plays out, I will continue this series.

Cover: Again, the Fallen series has lovely designs that have become some of my favorite covers. Well done.

Setting: Shoreline is the new boarding school in California Lucinda has been sent to, with a whole lot more new characters and a lot less of the previous characters I had grown to love. I didn’t really appreciate this, nor did I enjoy the atmosphere. I liked how at Sword and Cross, there were flaws and extreme conditions, but at Shoreline it seems as though everything is perfect—well, almost.

Characters: Daniel Grigori was much more controlling in this book, and even though it was for Luce’s safety, for some reason this irked me a bit.

   Luce was constantly breaking rules against everyone’s better judgment and seems to always give in to what people want her to do without a fight, another thing that annoyed me.

   I hate Cam as much as I have grown to, but I absolutely love Miles!

   Arriane was only in the last hundred pages or so in the book, but even then it made Torment so much more interesting. Oh, how I did miss that raunchy girl!

  Although interesting, I found myself not enjoying the presence of most of the other new characters introduced into the story.

Storyline: The storyline seemed to be lacking much more depth than the previous book (Fallen) had, and I can’t help comparing the two on the differences. It begins with the truce between Daniel and Cam, then with Lucinda going to live in yet another boarding school (Shoreline), living among both humans and Nephilims, to help her blend in and be safer.

Writing: I appreciated the writing better in the first book than this one. It wasn’t outstanding, but it was beautiful in its own way. Something that did annoy me, however, was how slow this one was—yes, it was even slower than the first one, but I do think you should read it, if you can tolerate it.

Surprises: Nothing was especially surprising to me, but the ending made me a little confused.

Overall: 3.5 stars. Although this review has more faults about Torment than anything marvelous about it, it is still an important book of the four-book series. It is still recommended, although it is a bit dull more times than less. There were some things I enjoyed, and some I didn’t. But everyone has their own opinions, so don’t let my mostly-negative one stop you from reading this overall great series!

Recommended: I would recommend this book for anyone who loves a unique love story, fallen angels, and/or doesn’t mind taking their time with this one.