Rapture by Lauren Kate

The story once again, revolves around Luce and Daniels love, a love that has become somewhat irritating. They do everything they can to stop the erasing of the 7 thousand years after the initial "fall". I couldn't help but wonder; would it be so bad for time to rewind? Would it be so bad for humans to start over again? If it were to occur, would history repeat itself, or would humans make better decisions this time around and harm the earth less? Or perhaps they would harm it more? Would all the problems of our time on earth due to human activity still be existing or would everyone's biggest worry be the colour of dress they were going to wear the next day? If so, would erasing time not be a good thing? But, I digress. What I really meant to say is that Lauren Kate never explained why the time shift backwards is horrible and should be stopped past the short explanation on the tenth page that Luce would lose all her understanding and learning "who she is and what she could be". I don't know about you, but the foundation of the story, from the very beginning seemed extremely weak and to be honest, I didn't want to read past the first chapter. Maybe losing her memories is the en of the world for Luce, but In what way can the reader relate to the protagonist if the only driving force behind her actions is some melodramatic love story?

But regardless of my annoyance at Rapture, I felt that I should give the book a chance and keep reading. Somewhere near the middle, Rapture got better -- if you can ignore Luce and Daniel constantly clinging to one another and identical descriptions of the feeling of Daniel's arm around Luce every time he put her arms around him; which was a lot... when the other characters got a bit of screen time, so to speak. Still, there was way too much Luce and Daniel; Luce leans into Daniel, Daniel coddles Luce, Luce cries on Daniel's shoulder, Daniel coddles Luce, repeat. Maybe I am biased because I love Cam and Miles so I, naturally, wanted to hear more about them. One point that annoyed me endlessly was the fact that Lauren Kate mentioned Cam's past multiple times, alluding that an explanation is forthcoming, but his past remains shrouded in mystery to the end.

Bottom line, if you love repetitive melodrama and a sappy love story with sugar coating over everything, go ahead and read Rapture. Myself, I generally disliked the book; it is as if Kate saw the reviews of her old books, and what people liked, and took all those elements and put them into Rapture over and over again; although admittedly, the book did improve near the middle only to go slightly downhill again at the end.