REVIEW: PASSION

Thanks to Sarah at Feeling Fictional for kindly giving me the ARC of this one.

Passion
Author: Lauren Kate
Series: Yes, Fallen #3
UK Publisher: Random House
UK release date: July 2011
Genre: YA

Following on from Torment Luce steps through an Announcer, a shadow of her own past, to race back through her previous lives and discover the truth behind the curse and reaffirm her love with Daniel. Luce visits MesoAmerica, a Victorian manor house and the First World War. Each time she comes closer to understanding why she dies and how strong their love is.

Review: Passion is very different to the previous two books in the Fallen series, as Luce disappears into an Announcer to visit her past lives throughout a variety of different historical eras. Spending a small period of time in each lifetime is certainly interesting and gives pace to the plot as Luce continually bounces around from one place to the next and I had to stay on my toes to figure out what new situation she had landed into.

In each lifetime Luce tries to figure out what her love for Daniel means. If Passion has done one thing for me then it has been to cement Luce and Daniel’s relationship across millennia and prove that Daniel’s love is absolutely everlasting and unshakable. In the previous books I wasn’t really won around by their love, but I have been converted after seeing Daniel bear such intense love and pain.

Fans of Miles, Shelby, Cam and the other fallen angles may be disappointed as they only feature every so often. This story is really all about Luce and Daniel. However new character Bill pops up in one of Luce’s announcers, helping her to blend in to each new time period, adding some biting cynicism and also being able to give a historical context to where they’re visiting.

There are a few minor inconsistencies with the time travel aspect, as Daniel sometimes didn’t remember being visited by his ‘future’ self, and other times he would. It made this element more confusing than it needed to be, although it isn’t a serious flaw of the plot.

In Passion you get more of an understanding of what the curse involves and why Luce dies each lifetime. Luce has to visit a number of her past selves to figure things out a small bit at a time. There wasn’t a big epiphany moment for me where I finally thought I understood the curse (I’m not sure I know the whole picture even know), but there was more a trickle of understanding building up towards the end.

At the end a whole other big dilemma is opened up, which some might see as leading perfectly into the next book. Personally I felt frustrated, that the story was being dragged out and that there wasn’t enough from the book for me. I can only presume that Passion is a bridge into Rapture, however I'm not sure if I'm patient enough to be kept waiting on this story.

Passion is filled with captivating and fast paced time travel, love, pain, and an unshakable depiction of Daniel and Luce’s relationship. A continuing saga in the eternal struggle between life and death, heaven and hell, and joy and despair.

Rating: 3*