Torment by Lauren Kate

Overview from Barnes and Noble:

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.

My thoughts:
In the second book of the Fallen series Daniel sparks even more questions.  He tells Luce that she must hide at Shoreline, a boarding school on the opposite coast where she will be safe if she stays at the school.  But  he doesn't elaborate on what she needs to stay safe from.  He visits a few times over the course of the few weeks she needs to be there, but things are always tense and she feels as though he is leaving her out of the loop, keeping details to himself.  She chafes under the pressure to stay put.

This time her fellow students are all Nephilim, the children or descendants of children born of fallen angel and human unions.  Many of them have special skills, but Luce doesn't know why she is there.  Her parents are humans and she does not have any of their skills.  But she can see the shadows known as Announcers that humans cannot.  In the first book Miss Sophia, an elder who is trans eternal, wanted to kill her but she never knew why.  Now she has to worry about Outcasts, who are blind fallen angels who want to kill her, but again she doesn't know why.  Her classes are all taught by Steven, a demon or angel who sided with Lucifer at the time of the fall, and Francesca, an angel who sided with the Throne.  They are counterparts and cover the skills and history the Nephilim need to know for what is coming.  They show how Announcers hold the memories of past events of certain people or angels.

Luce starts to experiment with using the Announcers to see her past and the past lives she has shared with Daniel due to their curse.  They have been cursed for their love and she has been reborn many,many times.  She and Daniel are fated to meet each time, fall in love and then she dies by going up in flames, but this current life is her last, if she dies this time she will not come back.  Something is different, although no one seems to know what, and since she now can be killed for good many come out of the woodwork hoping to do so. 

Luce befriends Shelby and Miles, two Nephilim students who help her learn more about her past and about her curse, which all the Nephilim are aware of as it is like a bedtime story for them, the story of the love Luce and Daniel have shared through the ages and their inability to stay together.

Luce's frustration with Daniel and her lack of knowledge of their history together can be felt throughout the book.  Luce questions their union and whether they really are supposed to be together.  She thinks about  how much easier it would be to be with someone who leads a regular, everyday sort of life, instead of one who needs to fly off on his own wings to take care of secret missions.

Product Details

• ISBN-13: 9780385739146
• Publisher: Random House Children's Books
• Publication date: 9/28/2010
• Pages: 452
• Sales rank: 24,658
• Age range: 12 - 17 Years                        
• Series:Lauren Kate's Fallen Series , #2