Rapture: Book 4 of the Fallen Series [Anglais] [Broché]

*Complimentary copy provided. This does NOT affect my review in any way.*
Rapture. Such an appropriate title. This book absolutely stole my breath away and made me cry while my throat was clenched tight. In other words--I was raptured, reading the fourth and final installment in the Fallen series.

Luce has just come back from the past bearing bad news. Lucifer is planning to wipe away millions of years of history. To bring them back to the one event that started it all--the Fall. But if that happened, Luce and Daniel wouldn't fall in love over centuries. Everything would come apart. So they, along with their angelic (and demonic) friends are on a race against time to find the three relics that will lead them to the site of the Fall where everything and anything is revealed. Including the secret revelation that sparked Lucifer's rebellion in the first place.

Rapture made me love the Fallen series. In the beginning it was just something to read. But now I'm making it my number one priority to re-read every book all over again with new eyes. Rapture left my crying so many times and made me love Lucinda more than ever. (Notice how I use her full name.) We encounter new characters like Dee and Olianna and revisit with old ones. Either way, each one is essential to this story and most (excluding a certain few...) of them now have places in my heart.

The writing was beautiful and the plot never left you bored. Fast paced and filled to the brim with action, I couldn't tear myself away and found myself reading deep into the night and finishing it in one sitting. Even the parts that are usually written awkwardly, the heaven descriptions, were wonderfully described, giving me the sense of angelic propriety.

Daniel seemed incredibly bossy and a bit merciless so I'm definitely Team Cam. I didn't like the way he reacted to certain angels' deaths even if they were his friends. I wanted to pull out my hair. Luce, on the other hand, seemed way more mature than in Fallen when we met her as a whiny girl. It was absolutely relieving when I realized that she was a better heroine than before. Whew!

It was a great angel read, although not as dark I prefer, but it was still awesome. The way Lauren Kate finished off Luce and Daniel's story was absolutely fitting and I loved it, although it was a bit saddening. I cried when I read the last line, it was absolutely touching. It was absolutely 100% beautiful and is definitely one ending I hadn't even imagined.

First Impressions: I was practically pulling out all of my hair waiting around for Rapture to arrive in bookstores. Luckily for me, I was able to snag a Kindle copy of this book a few months before its publication. The Fallen novels are my guilty reading pleasure and I'm not at all ashamed to admit it. If you have read any of these books and are considering starting the series, just be warned that they are highly addictive and once you start to read, you won't be able to stop. Rapture is the final book in this series, so you are definitely going to want to read the previous books before beginning this one.

First 50 Pages: I cleared my schedule so I could spend plenty of time reading and absorbing Rapture. It felt very bittersweet because I've loved these books ever since I read Fallen and it's kind of painful every time a good series comes to an end. I'll admit that I wasn't super crazy about Fallen, but each of the subsequent novels has been better than the last. Rapture ended up being a stunning conclusion, and looking back at it, I feel happy with the way everything turned out and was wrapped up. Lauren Kate's writing had me completely sucked in once again and I blew through this final book just a little too fast, or at least it felt that way to me.

Characters & Plot: Final conclusions are revealed, characters are killed off, and this book was just full of surprises that I didn't really see coming. I'll do my best to keep all of the important points spoiler-free while writing this review, but it is going to be hard! It seemed like every other page I found out some kind of revelation or an answer to questions I had going into this book. And I totally cried a few different times. Lauren Kate's writing is just so good that I became emotionally invested in so, so many of her characters. I'd also like to point out that some people might be offended by the way Lauren visualizes Heaven, especially for hard-core Christians. I'm not easily offended, nor am I Christian, so I can't say that the way Lauren describes the pitfalls of heaven really bothered me, but I can see how Rapture may raise a few eyebrows. Just keep in mind that this is a work of fiction and try to keep an open mind if you are going to read this book.

Rapture once again revisits Luce and Daniel for their final moments of struggle and love. The time they have together may be running out and their fate is about to make an appearance. However, they have to figure out a way to stop the clock and stop Lucifer if they are even going to have a chance at making everything work. The problem is, how are they going to stop him? A battle is surely brewing and it promises to rain hell fire on anyone in its path of destruction.

In order to save what they love and each other, Luce and Daniel have to find the place where the original fallen angels fell and make sure it doesn't happen again or there will be an end to everything good they know. Their time is so limited and they have no idea where to look. As the clock ticks down to the final hours, will they be able to succeed or will they fail? Well, that's a question I can't answer here.

What I will tell you is that Rapture had me on the edge of my seat and I was flying through the pages to figure out what happens. The whole conclusion was very surprising and just when I thought I had it all figured out, Lauren would throw a wrench in the plot that made me rethink literally everything. The price that Luce and Daniel have to pay to save what they love is enormous and it pulled at my heart. All of Daniel's secrets he has held in for so long have come pouring out at last and it was interesting to see Luce's reaction to everything he had to finally tell her.

Final Thoughts: As I've stated before, the ending was so bittersweet. Rapture was completely everything I had hoped it would be and so much more. I can see myself picking up this series time and time again and never becoming tired of it. It truly is an epic story of love, love that is lost, and love found again. The struggles that Luce and Daniel had to deal with would break most couples, but they always had their hopes and dreams and they truly loved each other enough to have faced every obstacle that was thrown their way. I am going to miss this series and these characters so much! But, I'm excited for Lauren Kate to begin a new series and whatever she comes up with next, I know will be just fantastic!

This is a satisfying ending to a good series. There were a lot of loose ends from the previous books, but I am happy to report that most if not all of my questions were answered. This book is full of revelations for Luce and for the reader...and that coupled with the tight pacing of the action, it becomes impossible to put the book down. I finished it in less than a day.

To sum the book up, Luce & Co. have to find a way to stop Lucifer from destroying their past...and they only have nine days to do so. While Luce learned a lot about her past lives through Passion (Fallen), she still does not remember her role in the bigger picture. How did Daniel originally fall in love with her? Why is Luce, a mortal, so pivotal to the final showdown between Heaven and Hell? These questions are central to unraveling the seven thousand-year-old war raging for her soul.

As a caution, the subject matter in this book is definitely provocative--even more so than in the previous books. Lauren Kate uses Catholic lore when building her facts about angels and their fall from grace, and the liberties she takes with religious personalities and themes will undoubtedly offend some. It may go without saying, but if you are a strict Christian, make sure you approach this as a novel, not religious writing. It is intended to be a good story based on Christian religious lore, NOT a faithful portrait of official Catholic or Protestant doctrine. As a devout Christian myself, I found myself disagreeing with some of Kate's choices, but then again Christianity is a religion of diverse beliefs and doctrines, so I don't hold her to my own standards. (**For those worried, spoilers: some serious liberty is taken with fleshing out the characters of God and Lucifer, and there are some scenes of death and desecration that take place at real-world sites of religious significance**).

However, I hope that doesn't deter you from reading "Rapture." It has haunted me all day with its love story and its intricate plot. Lauren Kate is as nimble a storyteller as I have encountered in modern YA fiction--this is a book that closes her wonderful series with crowning glory.