Pretty Little Liars Halloween (2012) Episode

If anyone reads this blog (which I doubt because I don't have any followers, but I like doing it so...I keep doing it), you don't know that I LOVE Pretty Little Liars. I never really write about it - because this is like ranting for me and I only rant about things I hate - but this year's Halloween episode was so exciting that I have to. And there was something I noticed that I don't think anyone else noticed and I have to put it out there on the chance that someone will see this. So this entry won't be that long since it's only one thing.

There were plenty of things revealed in this episode and a lot of different clues that we could use to figure out who "A" is, but most of those have already been written about. I've looked through a lot of different articles to see if what I noticed had been written about and it HASN'T!! How no one could see this is beyond me, but alright. Let's get to it.

For a while now, fans of PLL have been talking about the theory that Aria is "A". No one can really explain her motive for this (except for the fact that Alison was going to tell Aria's mother that Aria's father was cheating on her, so Aria would have a reason to want Alison dead. But even that doesn't explain why Aria would want to torment Spencer, Emily, and Hanna), but you can't deny that there are a ton of clues that point to Aria. So, I've had my eyes peeled looking for more clues pointing to Aria. Tonight, I found a BIG one.

Aria is sitting on the train by herself, looking out the foggy window, when Adam Lambert comes over. He says that she doesn't look like she's having very much fun. They then have a conversation where she explains that she is having fun, it's just that her boyfriend couldn't make it so she's bummed about that. He then asks her name and she tells him, but the train is (I'm assuming here) passing another train and he can't hear her over the noise. She says her name again, but he still can't hear, so she writes her name on the foggy window. When she does, the first A in her name is written normally, but the second A is the one that got my attention. It was written exactly like "A" writes their nickname on notes or cards - anything that is handwritten.

This could mean a number of things, but I'm only going to go over the few easy answers: 1) Aria is "A"; 2) Someone very close to Aria (for example, Ezra) is "A"; or 3) The writers of the show want us to think that either Aria or someone close to her is "A". I'm going to tell you what I think.

I, sadly, think that Aria is a part of the A-team. There are just too many things that either point to her or make you think she may be "A". Let me tell you a couple of these clues, just in case you haven't come across them. In the intro to the show, Aria is the only one who shushes. At first, that didn't seem like such a big deal. All they did is just pick one girl to do it, right? I don't think so. In this show, you have to over-analyze everything. They could easily have done like New Girl does with their intro and switch between three or four different intros, but they didn't. This has to symbolize something, right? They've said
that we also need to pay attention to the season posters for clues, too. The first two season posters also only have Aria making the shushing motion she does in the intro to the show, but the season 3 poster is the one that everyone is really paying attention to. Aria has handcuffs around her ankles. I wonder why that could be...

Now for the big clues. I'm not going to list each and every clue that points to Aria on here, only the two big main clues. The first one is the "Black Swan Dress" theory. In "A's" room in the motel, we see a drawing of the Black Swan dress, supposedly the costume that "A" will be wearing at the masquerade ball. It's made of a black, feathery material and is worn with black heels and a black mask. We also see a girl at the ball with the same costume on. But... A while back, someone Tweeted Marlene King, the writer of the show, saying that Aria's outfit in the same episode - a truly ugly red and black checkered dress - was super ugly.
 
Marlene Tweeted back saying that there was a specific reason for Aria's costume and that it would all make sense in time. Ever since, people have been pouring over Aria's costume, trying to make sense of what Marlene said. Well, someone figured it out. If you go onto Google Images and look for "Black Swan poster", a poster for the movie Black Swan with Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis will come up. It shows a swan made of red and black checkered stripes, just like Aria's dress. Could it be that Aria is the one in the black swan dress?

The second big clue is something that no one noticed for a long time. The director of Pretty Little Liars, Norman Buckley, Tweeted something that made fans go back and look at season 1, episode 12, "Salt Meets Wound". He said: "there's a big old clue i put right in front of everyone's nose in episode 112. no one spotted it." Of course, a lot of people put out TONS of theories on what he could be talking about, but there is one that was discovered that sounds just right and wouldn't be too obvious. This is the episode after Hanna was hit by the car driven by "A", just after she sees who they think is "A" write something - "I see you" - on the back of Ezra's car when he and Aria are making out. Aria and Ezra see the message in this episode and Hanna tells Aria it was Noel Kahn. At the end of class, Aria comes up to Ezra - who is behind his desk and in front of the blackboard - and says, "I know who wrote that message on your car..."

The camera then turns to Ezra who looks up at Aria. The camera turns back to Aria, who says, "It was Noel Kahn." 

The camera turns to Ezra yet again and he replies. What we're supposed to be paying attention to in this scene is the blackboard. When the camera turns to Ezra the first time, if you look just to the left of Ezra's head, you'll see the sentence, "It was A."

Then, when it turns to him the second time, he's moved just a little so that it now says, "But I was A." 

This doesn't make much sense when thinking about the fact that it was Noel Kahn who wrote the message on the back of the car, but I think that is beside the point. I think the director was just trying to find a way to tell us that Aria is "A" with the blackboard, that way it wouldn't be obvious.

So, there are the main clues pointing toward Aria being "A". Now, onto my theory of the clue on the Halloween episode.

 As I said, Aria writes her name on the foggy window and the second A is written just like "A" signs their A on handwritten notes. It's definitely done on purpose. After she writes her name on the window, Adam explains that he has another set to get ready for and that she better come watch. She says she will and he leaves. While this is taking place, you can see the Queen of Hearts watching them. Right after Adam leaves, the Queen opens a tiny compartment on one of her rings. It is filled with some kind of white drug that will knock someone out for a bit. The Queen walks over while Aria is looking out the window and pours the white drug into her drink. The scene ends.

After a while, Spencer goes looking for Aria because Garrett has just told her that Aria's dad was with Ali the night she died. Spencer finds Hanna as she's looking for Aria and Hanna comes with her. The two of them go to where Aria was sitting, only to find Aria's purse minus Aria. They happen to look up and see the spot on the window where Aria wrote her name...only her name has been erased, leaving only the first A visible - clearly a sign from "A" that they have Aria.

I think that Aria is "A" and that, by writing her name on the window with the second A clearly written just like "A" signs their nickname, she was broadcasting to the other girls and other people who want to know who "A" is that she is "A" - or at least one "A". The Queen of Hearts is another part of the A-team and saw that Aria was broadcasting who she was - the Queen clearly did not like this and decided to teach Aria a lesson. The message was loud and clear:

DO NOT do that again...

So, that's my theory. Any PLL fans see this? Comment and let me know what you think!

~Oblivious          

Movies: House at the End of the Street (2012)

House at the End of the Street just came out a couple of weeks ago. My boyfriend and I went to see it in theaters for his birthday, and we were very disappointed. Here is the synopsis from IMDB.com:

A mother and daughter move to a new town and find themselves living next door to a house where a young girl murdered her parents. When the daughter befriends the surviving son, she learns the story is far from over.

 

To watch the trailer, click below.
House at the End of the Street (2012) Trailer

There will probably be some spoilers in this review, so if you haven't watched the movie and still want to, stop here! If you still want to know what I think of the film, but don't want to know any of the spoilers, go to the In conclusion part of this post at the very end.

The Film

The entire movie is about an hour and a half long. Let me tell the first thing that bugged me: more than half the movie was just build-up. For an entire hour, my boyfriend and I moved around in our seats, yawning and trying not to fall asleep while the story unfolded. I'd expected another movie where our heroine is trapped in a house with a psycho for the majority of the movie, but no. Not this time.

The film stars Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games, X-Men First Class) as Elissa, a teenage girl who moves to a new house with her mother, Sarah, played by Elisabeth Shue (Hollow Man, Leaving Las Vegas). They can only afford this huge house because of the house next door to them (practically in their back yard). A few years before, Carrie-Ann, the daughter of the house, killed her parents and disappeared into the woods. Some said she drowned in a creek, although there are rumors that sometimes you can see her running around in the woods. The only remaining member of their family is Ryan, Carrie-Ann's brother, who still lives in the house when Elissa and her mother move in. Ryan is played by Max Theiriot (Jumper, The Pacifier).

Ryan is a pariah in the town because of what happened with his family. He has no friends or family. One night, Elissa goes to a party with a guy she met at school, Tyler. He turns out to be a douche and tries to force Elissa to make-out (and probably something a little more dirty) with him. She does the typical, "stop, what are you doing, you jerk" routine before pushing him off her and storming out of the house. She calls her mom on her cell while she starts walking home. A car pulls over with a guy in it and he asks her if she wants a ride. At first, she tells him no, but it starts raining, so she gets in.

He introduces himself as Ryan. By now, Elissa has already heard the rumors. She blurts out that his parents died. He talks about how lonely he is because of the murders, and you start to feel bad for the guy. This begins the relationship between Elissa and Ryan.

Elissa's mother finds out that she spent time alone with Ryan and doesn't approve. She says that Elissa is always trying to change or help someone who is damaged. Her mother invites Ryan over for dinner and bluntly tells Ryan that he is not to be alone with her daughter. Elissa finds a way around this by forwarding all the calls to their house to her cell phone.

Elissa and Ryan's relationship turns romantic when Elissa kisses him. They start making out, but then Ryan forces her to leave out of nowhere.

It turns out that Ryan has been keeping Carrie-Ann in the basement all these years. Earlier, Ryan had told Elissa the story of Carrie-Ann; that one day they were swinging while their parents were smoking crack upstairs and Carrie-Ann fell off the swing. She hit her head and got brain damage because her parents didn't go to her when Ryan yelled for them. She didn't recognize anyone anymore and began to attack them. That's why she killed her parents. There are various points in the movie where Carrie-Ann escapes and Ryan has to catch her.

After Ryan apologizes for pushing Elissa out so suddenly, she invites him to her school's battle of the bands, where she is singing. He accepts and they agree to meet at the school. That night, Carrie-Ann escapes and runs into the woods with a butcher knife. Ryan runs after her and catches her, but not before she scares the crap out of a girl in a car with her boyfriend. While the couple is looking around, wondering what it was that scared the girl, Carrie-Ann is wiggling around, trying to escape Ryan's arms. You can tell his grip on her is very tight because his hands are almost entirely white with strain. Carrie-Ann pulls really hard to one side, causing Ryan's grip on her to break her neck.

Ryan loads her body into the trunk of his car and takes her to a remote place in some woods to bury her. Afterwards, he goes to a diner to, presumably, think about what he'd done. A waitress sees that he's upset and tries to cheer him up with a free slice of pie or cake (I can't remember which, but it doesn't really matter). While this is happening, Elissa is getting ready for the battle of the bands.

Ryan pulls up to the school, where Tyler, the douche who'd tried to force himself on Elissa, was waiting with his five douche friends. They taunt him but he ignores them. Elissa and Ryan talk backstage for a minute when one of Elissa's friends runs in and tells Ryan that his car is being smashed by the douches. Ryan runs out and sees them damaging his car. The douches then leave the car and decide to damage Ryan instead. There's a fight sequence, and it ends with Ryan and Tyler on the ground fighting. Ryan grabs Tyler's leg and breaks it. You hear the loud crack! and everything. Ryan gets up and runs away, realizing what he did.

Tyler's friends are pissed that he broke Tyler's leg, so they decide to go find Ryan at the only place he could go: his house. Elissa grabs Ryan's keys, which fell down during the fight, and takes his car to his place. She finds the douches lighting what looks like a toilet paper roll (but it can't be because TP doesn't break glass) on fire and throwing it in a window. It catches the curtains on fire, but Elissa makes it inside and stomps out the flames before they can catch anything else.

Elissa is running her vest - which she used to put out the fire - under the water in the sink when she spies an empty tampon and contacts box in the garbage. That's a little weird to have in the garbage when there are no women living in the house. (A little note here: my boyfriend whispered to me after she found the tampon box, "She probably thinks he sticks them up his butt or something." Sorry, that made me laugh and I had to put it in here.) She shrugs and puts them back in the garbage when she hears something banging downstairs.

Now, this is a little confusing, so read this slowly and try to keep up with me because I don't know how to explain this very well. The room that he had been keeping Carrie-Ann in is under the house. This is the route one would take to get to the room: Go downstairs into the basement, move the rug on the floor to expose cellar doors, go down into the cellar to find a purposeless hallway, at the end of the hallway there is a door. This is Carrie-Ann's room. Ryan always keeps it locked from the outside so that Carrie-Ann won't get out and kill someone. He keeps the key on the top of the doorframe.

Elissa follows the sound of the banging down into the basement. You think she's going to go to the rug on the floor when she opens the dryer and realizes that the banging was Ryan's shoes being tossed around in there. She laughs to herself and goes to turn around when her eye catches something metallic sticking out the edge of the rug. Upon closer examination, she discovers that there is a door under the rug. She opens the doors and goes down into the cellar. She discovers the door and (very slowly, I might add) walks to it. She tries the doorknob, but it's locked. She thinks to try the doorframe and, sure enough, there's the key.

Elissa opens the door and Carrie-Ann tries to attack her right away. Before she can get to Elissa, though, Ryan tackles Carrie-Ann to the bed. As he's strapping her back down, he yells at Elissa to go upstairs and he will explain everything when he gets up there.

She reluctantly goes upstairs and starts running the tap (to either wash her face or get a drink, but we don't know which). She sees the garbage and decides to go through it again. The contacts box had been folded in half and when she unfolded it, it turned out to be colored contacts. One big characteristic of Carrie-Ann is that she had really, really blue eyes. The contacts were "true blue".

As soon as she sees this, we cut to Ryan, who is still strapping Carrie-Ann down to her bed. The camera goes around the room as he talks to her and we see a Penn State hoodie draped across a rocking chair in the corner of the room. The waitress who served him that free dessert was wearing this when she served him.

Elissa finds a wallet with the waitress' ID in it in the garbage. She's now put two and two together: Ryan has captured a girl and is dressing her up like his sister. As soon as she gets the garbage back in the can, Ryan emerges from the basement. The wallet is still on the counter. Elissa gives some bogus excuse about needing to be home for her mom and tries to walk out, but Ryan isn't buying it. He grabs the back of her head while she's trying to walk out and slams it on the door, knocking her out.

Now, when Elissa first made it to Ryan's house, her mom called to make sure she was at home because her mom is a doctor and Tyler had just come to the ER with his broken leg. Remember that Elissa forwarded all the house calls to her cell phone. When Ryan hit Elissa's head on the door, she dropped her cell and it went under a little part of the counter, hidden. Elissa's mom called the house phone again while Ryan was downstairs with Elissa and when it went to voicemail, it played Elissa's cell phone voicemail. Elissa's mom asked her cop friend to go check on Elissa right after the phone call she had with Elissa earlier. She calls the cop and asks him to go by Ryan's house first because Elissa had forwarded all the house calls to her cell.

The cop makes it to Ryan's and knocks on the door just after Elissa wakes up and Ryan explains everything to her. Carry-Ann didn't get brain damage when she fell off the swing. She died. Ryan's parents blamed him and beat him all the time. They sent him away to his aunt's for a while. He snuck out one night and went to his parent's house dressed as Carrie-Ann and killed them. He got back to his aunt's before the bodies were discovered so no one knew it was him. He inherited the house and little bit of money from his parents, so he and his aunt moved into the house. His aunt had a stroke and died, and since then he has been kidnapping girls and keeping them in his basement, dressing them up like Carrie-Ann because he can't live without her. He tells Elissa that he is going to make her his new Carrie-Ann, that way he can have both Elissa and Carrie-Ann.

Elissa is tied up in the rocking chair in the corner of the room and the waitress - still dressed like Carrie-Ann - is tied up on the bed. Ryan goes upstairs to talk to the cop. The cop asks him if Elissa is there and he says no, then they talk about the incident with Tyler. As the cop is walking out, he sees the waitresses wallet - which is obviously a girl's wallet - on the counter, but he doesn't say anything about it. Once he steps out the door, Elissa's phone - which is still under the counter - starts ringing. Her mother tried calling her phone again. The cop hears it and stops. Ryan knows he's heard the phone, so he turns off the light. The cop knows something is up now that the lights are off and comes back into the house with his gun drawn.

As this is happening, Elissa is trying to get out of her ties. There's a big battle between the cop and Ryan, but Ryan ends up stabbing and killing the cop. Ryan then goes downstairs to check on Elissa. At this point, Elissa has kicked over the lamp in the room so that it is laying across her lap. The light bulb is directly on the tie on her left arm. It is burning the tie and her skin. She gets out of that tie and is trying to undo the right tie as Ryan starts coming downstairs. She gets out of the tie just as he opens the door and uses the door to knock him to the side. She runs out the door, grabs the key, and locks it from the outside.

She, of course, trips while running down the empty hallway before going up the stairs and into the basement. She closes the door to the cellar and moves the dryer on top of it. She runs to the basement door, but it is locked from the other side. Ryan has made it out of Carrie-Ann's room and is trying to break open the cellar doors. Elissa finds the garage and gets into a car parked in it. As she's looking around for the keys, she finds a bottle of chloroform and a rag. Suddenly, Ryan is at the side of the car and reaches in, grabbing the rag out of her hand and holding it to her face. She passes out.

When Elissa wakes up, she is in the trunk of the car. The body of the waitress is right beside her. While this is happening, Elissa's mother has shown up at Ryan's house, looking for Elissa. She knows that Elissa is there, but Ryan keeps telling her that she isn't. Just as she is about to leave, she hears Elissa screaming for her help. Elissa had broken out of the trunk and broke the glass out of the window in the door to the garage with a hammer. She heard her mom talking to Ryan and screamed for her. Her mom pushes her way past Ryan and into the house. She is making her way to the garage when Ryan stabs her. Ryan puts her in the basement and goes after Elissa. Elissa runs into the basement and sees her mom. She grabs the gun and flashlight that the cop dropped when he was stabbed.

She hides behind some shelves as Ryan comes into the room. He is talking to her while he's looking. He decides to turn off the lights. Elissa tries to use the flashlight to see, but the batteries are dying so it only works half the time. You can't see anything except for when the flashlight decides to work and you can only heaar Elissa's breathing. This goes on for about two minutes. Finally, the flashlight turns on just as Ryan attacks Elissa. She fires the gun multiple times and shoots Ryan. Elissa then turns on the light and Ryan tries to attack her again, but her mom has woken up and knocks him out.

We cut to a later date, where Elissa and her mom are moving out of their house. Earlier in the film, when Elissa and Ryan were getting to know each other, he took her to a tree near his house. He told her what his mom once said to him: that everything has secrets that are obvious, you just have to know how to look at things to find them. He asks her what she sees when she looks at the tree and she tells him she just sees a tree. He then tilts her head a little bit and asks her, "Now what do you see?" She sees a face. Elissa returns to this tree just before they leave.

Her mom joins her and asks what she's looking at. Elissa then shows her mom what Ryan showed her before, tears running down her cheeks as she does.

We cut to Ryan, who is now in a mental hospital. We enter his thoughts (at least, that's what I assume this is showing). He's remembers his mom and dad bringing a birthday cake out to him, singing happy birthday. When it shows Ryan, he is dressed up like a girl. His mom is singing, "Happy Birthday, Carrie-Ann..." Ryan then says that he isn't Carrie-Ann, that his name is Ryan. His mom hits him hard across the head.

And that is the end of the film.

My Review

 

Okay, first I'll tell you what I liked about the film, and then I'll tell you what I didn't like.

 

I liked the psychological twist. Finding out that Ryan's parents had dressed him up like Carrie-Ann and that's what drove him to kill his parents and then kidnap girls to be Carrie-Ann was very interesting to me. That might just be because I'm a psychology major, but that's my opinion.

 

I liked the fact that they made you feel sorry for Ryan and then he turned out to be the killer, but I didn't like it at the same time. I liked it because it made me think that this guy could never be the killer. They did a really good job of making him seem like the victim in this movie. But, like I said, I didn't like it because it made me sad because I really did like this character. When you find out your favorite character in a movie is also the villian, it bums you out.

 

The scene with the malfunctioning flashlight was super creepy and it pissed me off at the same time. Every time the light would come on, I would jump, thinking that Ryan would be there, but they made you wait for it. That two minutes felt way longer. It also pissed me off because the room is very quiet and this chick keeps breathing really loudly and making whimpering noises and cursing the flashlight. He's going to know where you are, dumbass, and not just because of the light! Shut. Up.

 

Now, there are probably some other things that I liked, but they are little things. I'm going to get into the things I didn't like now, and (trust me) there are a lot.

 

First of all, like I said before, I really hated the fact that most of the movie was build-up. When you go to watch a horror movie, you want it to be mostly horror. I was scared (maybe) five minutes when watching this film. So, if you're looking for a scare, don't watch this movie.

 

Another thing that really annoys me is how nosy Elissa is. Throughout the film, she is sticking her nose in places it doesn't belong. When she first visits Ryan's home, she wanders throughout his house without asking permission and stumbles on Carrie-Ann's room - her actual room that she'd had before she died. Elissa just grabs all sorts of things, asking Ryan about them. I was actually surprised that he answered her. Also, who goes snooping through someone's garbage? That has stalker written all over it. Then we come to the matter of the door under the rug. (I'm groaning while I think about it.) First of all, the only reason she knows there's a door under the rug in the first place is because she happens to notice the door hinge sticking out from under the rug. It's just a little sliver of it, but she notices it. Who would actually notice something like that in real life? This chick would be the best detective ever. Second, when you find a hidden door, do you go inside? No, you don't. Common sense tells you to leave whatever it is alone. There's a reason this door is hidden. On top of that, we have the fact that this door is also a cellar door. I don't know about you, but I'm freaked out by cellars. They're dark and creepy, and that's the number one place you'd expect something bad to happen in movies, other than woods. Even if I opened a cellar door and there was nothing but boxes in the room, I would still be freaked out and would not - under any circumstances - go in that room.

 

Now we come to the matter of the cop. This cop came to Ryan's house looking for Elissa for her mother. He knows that there is a possibility that she is there. He also knows that Ryan is the only person who lives in the house. Why would he just ignore the fact that there is a woman's wallet on the counter? No cop in real life would ever do that. I know plenty of cops because my mom works with them, and they wouldn't ignore that. Cops ask about things that seem strange because there might be a chance that it is connected to their case. So that part of the movie makes no sense.

 

There's some more things that bug me about this movie, but they are little things so I won't go into them. Overall, I wouldn't recomend this movie to anyone who isn't interested in psychology. Even then, I might not recommend it; instead, I might just tell them what happens to save them from losing an hour and a half of their life that they won't ever get back.

 

In conclusion

If I had to give House at the End of the Street (2012) a rating, it would probably be 1 out of 4 stars.

 

So, in conclusion, I don't recommend that you watch this movie. If you want to know what happens, well...I just told you. But if you didn't want to read the spoilers and just came to this part of this post, you could read the The Film section or go to wikipedia and read the synopsis on the site. It will tell you everything, it just won't give you as much detail as I did. And if you want to watch a horror movie, go rent a Halloween or Friday the 13th movie. Don't waste your time on this film.

 

~Oblivious

 

 



Books: Fallen Series by Lauren Kate

The Fallen series by Lauren Kate has been a really popular book since the first one came out. The first book in the series, Fallen, has been named number 5 on the New York Times best seller list in the past, a USA Today Bestseller, an Indie Bestseller, and a Publisher's Weekly Flying Start. Fallen is about a sixteen-year-old girl named Lucinda Price (a.k.a. Luce) who, after some mysterious fire in her past, is sent to a Sword and Cross, a reform school. There she meets Daniel Grigori, a gorgeous blonde whom she feels a strange attraction to. The problem here is that Daniel seems to be a grade-A douche, flipping her off for no reason the first time they see each other. On the other hand, we have Cameron Briel, also known as Cam. Cam is very sweet to Luce even though there's some part of her that thinks he's dangerous. The entire book is centered around the love triangle between the three of them. The thing that I love most about this book, however, is that it isn't like Twilight - where only a fourth of the book is action and the rest is the lady protagonist feeling a strange attraction to a very pale, mysterious guy she just met and is trying to figure him out. Instead, there's more action to this book. Even though Luce wants to know Daniel better, she doesn't spend every single second of the day thinking about him. Also, the action isn't just at the end of the book. It's throughout it, which keeps things interesting. I'm not saying that Twilight wasn't good, but it definitely wasn't as great as Fallen.
There will be a few spoilers in this review, so don't read it until you finish the series.

We all know what happened in the first book. I couldn't put the book down once I'd started reading it. I knew that Daniel was a fallen angel because I'd overheard a girl in my class talking about the book, but that still didn't ruin the book for me. I think the only thing I didn't really like about the book is the protagonist's name. Luce. Now, I get Lucinda. I think that is a very pretty name. But I think that if a girl is named Lucinda, the first rational nickname to give her is Lucy. A lot of people were confused about her name because it is spelled like it should sound like loose, but that doesn't make much sense, so they thought it was pronounced like Lucy. I was one of those people. Why would you call a girl Luce(loose)? That's not a good nickname to have at all. But that's the only thing I really don't like about Fallen.

I can't say the same for the second book, Torment. It was...okay. I liked that Luce got to learn more about the announcers, but it just went too slow for me. There was barely any action and at least one of the things they didn't figure out until it was too late really annoyed me. Phil. The outcast who was posing as a human to get closer to Shelby and then closer to Luce. How did they not figure that out? I figured that out as soon as they mentioned that his eyes were weird looking. Also, there were maybe three or four parts in the book that had Daniel in them. I thought we'd be seeing more of him in the second book, not less. The only really interesting part of the book - that involved Daniel, that is - was when Miles kissed Luce and Daniel saw it. The ending of the book was disappointing compared to the first book. How were Luce's parents gone that long just walking the dog? That made no sense. How could Miles turn into Luce and suddenly all the outcasts were focused on him? At the very least, the girl who had been "looking" at Luce the entire time they were talking should've know something was wrong.

Passion, the third book in the series, was a little dull. Yes, we get to learn a lot more about the curse by seeing Luce's past, but it was very repetitive. It got to the point that I was groaning when I turned the page and saw that we got to look at yet another life. And what was the deal with Bill? How did Luce not see that something was off about him the first time they met? Obviously he liked making her uncomfortable because he knew that seeing Daniel would shake her up and did it anyways. Why did he take on the shape of a really disgusting gargoyle? And is there anyone else out there who saw that Bill was just a little too anxious for Luce to drag that starshot across her chest? Who didn't know that Bill was bad at, at least, that point in the book? Okay, and here's a thought, why would Lucifer tell Luce what his plan was? That part just doesn't make any sense. If he kept his plan to himself, he wouldn't have to worry about it not working.

Even though this isn't really part of the series - it's like a novella, even though they still call it a novel - but I'm going to write about it anyways. Fallen in Love is a short "novel" that takes place while Luce is going through her past lives. In short, it is all about Valentine's Day. We get to see the one and only Valentine's Day and Daniel and Luce get to share. Shelby and Miles get together in this book. We see who Arriane and Roland love. It's four short stories all in one book that come together in the end. It's a lot like the movie Valentine's Day.

The last book that brings everything to a head is Rapture. Again, I felt that all up until the end was a little slow. Maybe I felt that way just because I was ready to find out all about this curse and how Daniel and Luce got involved in the first place. They go through a lot to find the place where the angels fell because Lucifer is going to open an announcer into the future there to catch all the angels in, effectively erasing time between the fall and right now. We don't really know why he is doing it until the end of the book, when we find out what brought the curse about in the first place.

It turns out that Luce is actually a fallen angel, too. In Heaven, Lucinda was God's (who is a woman in the books, by the way) third angel. She was very special to God. Lucifer was God's first angel, and Gabbe her second. When the angels were created, they all adored God and God alone. No one ever thought twice about showing anyone else the affection that they thought could only go to God. But one day God left to create the earth and stars and humans. Lucifer was convinced that God loved his new creatures more than he loved the angels, so he turned his attention to Lucinda.

He taught Lucinda how to love someone other than God by kissing her and showing her affection. She was happily in love with him until he started to become someone else. Instead of talking to her or listening to her, he would just go on and on about how he would have his own realm where he and Lucinda could rule. He didn't want to be stuck in Heaven where they said he could love no one other than God. But Lucinda didn't want to go. She was sure that she could love God and Lucifer at the same time.

Time went on and soon Lucifer would only talk about the roll call - the time when all the angels would declare whose side they were on. It was taking a toll on Lucinda, and she soon found herself crying all alone. A shadow cast over her and she looked up to see Daniel. She told him to leave her alone, but he was fascinated; he had never seen someone crying before. He asked her what was wrong and she told him. It made Lucinda feel so good to tell someone her problems without them interrupting her. It made her feel love toward Daniel, too, and (we have to assume here) Daniel wanted to know what love felt like, too. They wound up kissing and fell in love right then and there.

Lucinda spent time with Daniel, falling more and more in love with him. Lucifer didn't know because he was too busy making plans for Hell. When it comes time for the roll call, Lucinda has no idea what she is going to do. She doesn't want to go to Hell with Lucifer, but she doesn't want to stay in Heaven either because that would mean she couldn't love Daniel. But Daniel fixed that problem for her; when it came time for Daniel to come up (they called the lowest angels up first and worked their way up; Daniel was the sixth angel, so he went before Lucinda) he told both Lucifer and God that this fighting wasn't necessary. That they didn't need anything but love, and that was what he chose. He chose to be with Lucinda, no matter what happened. She flew up next to him and declared that she, too, would go wherever Daniel went.

God decided that they would both fall, too, because they weren't allowed to be in Heaven if they loved anyone other than God. But Lucifer wanted them to be punished for not making a choice, and we have to assume that he really did this because he was upset about Lucinda loving Daniel. God and Lucifer decided that Daniel would remain an angel, but Lucinda would be human, reincarnated over and over again. When she hit adolesense, she would burn up and die. But the real horrible thing about this curse is that they were to find each other, again and again, falling in love over and over, only for her to die. The curse could only be broken when Lucinda was brought up without a religion and she figured out - by herself - who she really was.

In the end, Luce gets her wings back and has to fly up to Lucifer before they hit the ground so that she can try and talk him out of his plans. She tries to let him down easy, telling him that she loves him but she loves Daniel more. They argue and God intervenes. God stops Lucifer from fulfilling his plans and asks Daniel and Luce to make their decision again now that they have broken the curse. Of course, they both choose each other again.

God tells them that if they really do choose to be together again that they will have to be punished yet again. This time the punishment is that they will both be human, they will not be reincarnated, and they must find each other on their own before they die. Heaven and Hell will not intervene and bring them together again. They accept the punishment.

The epilogue is in Luce's point of view. She is in another life and is going to college. She goes to a party with her roommate and, when it gets too packed, she decides to go downstairs for some fresh air. She sits down next to the garden outside and is smelling the white peonies when someone walks up and surprises her. I don't think I need to tell you that this is Daniel. They hit it off right away.

The very last sentence in the book is, "...Luce and Daniel fell in love for the first - and the last - time."

I think that this series is incredible. The story is amazing and, even though it can get a little boring in parts, it is definitely worth reading. When I read that Luce is really an angel, too, it surprised me and I thought it was a little anti-climatic, but finding out that Luce was with Lucifer first really made up for it. And the end was a little iffy to me too. They're human? Why didn't God just realize that she should change the "you can only love me" rule, and let them stay in Heaven? I mean, Luce just got her wings back! But, what can you do? I don't think God would've changed the rule even if it were in real life. The ending was good, even if it did make me a little sad. I think I was just sad because the series was ending.

So, if you haven't read the books, you should even though you already know what happens because they are just that good. I give the series 4.5 out of 5 stars.

I don't know if anyone will actually read this, but if you do, just let me know if you want me to review something and I will. Hopefully this will help someone with something. Well, that's all.

~Oblivious