Luce would die for Daniel. In fact, she has. Over and over again. Over hundreds of years Luce and Daniel have shared the same fate: They meet, they fall for one another, Luce dies, and Daniel is left alone, broken, and grieving. But maybe there is a solution to this, a way to stop the cycle from repeating itself, a way for them to be together with Luce dying. Luce is sure that her past lives hold the information that she needs to break the cycle once and for all. So, Luce sets off on a journey of many lifetimes. She is going back through the years to see her past with Daniel and to find the key to making their love last. But it may be more dangerous than she realizes as Cam and the Outcasts are hunting her. No one is looking for Luce harder than Daniel because he knows that if Luce manages to rewrite their history together, the love that they share could go up in flames.
This is the first book in the Fallen series that I have never read before! I was really excited to read this book after reading Torment because of the cliffhanger that Torment ended on. Even though I was excited to read this book, I was also really nervous because this book deals with time travel. Time travel can be a tricky subject because there isn’t really a definite answer for what happens when you time travel. This can lead to quite a sticky situation and can cause some serious problems.
Before I talk about the issue with time travel, I am going to talk about the fact that this book answered so many questions. Much like Torment, this book was Luce’s journey of understanding. Even though Torment was slightly slower because things were being clarified, we weren’t learning that much about Luce and Daniel’s relationship/relationships in the past. The previous book dealt more with world-building questions and the questions about how the angels work as a society. In Passion, Luce is learning about how their relationships have been in the past and she is learning about herself. This made Luce an even more well-rounded character than she was in Torment. By proxy, Daniel also became more real in this book because we got to see more of him and how he behaved with Luce in the past. I would say that this book featured the most character development out of all the books in this series. The plot of this book was quite fast considering that this book was very explorative. I liked the pace of the book but the plot was pretty predictable and this time I can be sure that the plot was predictable because this is my first time reading Passion. I was able to predict the major twist in the story which kind of disappointed me because I was hoping I was wrong so that the story would be more interesting.
Now let’s talk about what made me really nervous about reading this book: time travel. Anytime time travel (pun not intended) becomes a plot point I am extremely apprehensive of it. Time travel can get so confusing and paradoxical and then it becomes a mess where it’s hard to keep track of what happened and what’s going to happen and it’s not a fun experience. For example: changing the past will change the future but traveling back in time is the character’s future so how can it change the future when it is the future, which leads to the question of can anything even be changed or will the character just be stuck in an endless time loop? This opens the can of worms that is: the multiverse/different streams of time and how each decision that is made by a character can create a new timeline where that character makes a different decision and in the end things just get super confusing, weird, and sometimes even philosophical. The nice thing about this book is that Lauren Kate didn't even try to explain how changing the past will change the future. She declared it as a fact of the universe which means that actions taken when in the past are going to change the events that take place in the future. Wonderful! We have rules for how the universe works and we don't have to worry that much about the rules of traveling through time. However, I ended up continuing to think of all of the issues of time travel. Even though Lauren Kate gave us ground rules for time travel, I thought that she was unable to follow her own rules which led to me being super confused.
While there was a lot that I did not enjoy about how time travel was dealt with in this book, I loved the way Lauren Kate characterized the Luce's of the past. Each of the past Luces were unique while still being the same, it was amazing! The Luce’s of the past shared characteristics of our Luce but still fit into the time period that they existed in. This extended to Luce and Daniel’s relationship as well. In every life, the way they met and the way they interacted with each other was unique yet familiar. Considering the number of previous Luce’s that are represented in this book, the fact that Lauren Kate was able to make each one so unique is mind-blowing.
I would give this book 3 stars for two reasons. The first is the predictability of the book and the second is the time travel. I like to be wowed and surprised by books and this one did not do that. Time travel wouldn’t have been such an issue for me if it had been executed a little better. I ended up spending too much brain space thinking about the ramifications of the rules that Lauren Kate had set for time traveling, rather than focusing on the story itself. I found myself stopping frequently to think about what would happen which was basically time that I spent not reading the book. Other than these two things, I liked this book. Being able to see the various versions of Luce was pretty amazing and I enjoyed seeing how Daniel changed over time as well. I am looking forward to reading the next book!
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