Review for Fallen in Love by Lauren Kate

WARNING
This is a collection of short stories from the Fallen series and by talking about the plot there may be spoilers from the first three books in this series.

Fallen in Love by Lauren Kate
Publisher: Doubleday
Release Date: 2nd February 2012
Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal Romance, Angels, Short Stories 
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Source: Received from the publisher for review

Amazon Summary:
"Unexpected. Unrequited. Forbidden. Eternal. Everyone has their own love story.

And in a twist of fate, four extraordinary love stories combine over the course of a romantic Valentine's Day in Medieval England. Miles and Shelby find love where they least expect it. Roland learns a painful lesson about finding-and losing love. Arianne pays the price for a love so fierce it burns. And for the first -and last- time, Daniel and Luce will spend a night together like none other.

Lauren Kate's FALLEN IN LOVE is filled with love stories . . . the ones everyone has been waiting for."

Review 
I have to say that usually I’m not really a fan of short stories mainly because I find that they’re not long enough to get to know the characters and there’s not enough time for plot development but when I heard about Fallen in Love I figured I’d give it a go as those reasons are irrelevant with these four short stories as they centre around the characters of the Fallen world, a series that I love.

The book is set alongside the same timeline as Passion, the third book in this series, and takes place in Medieval England on Valentine’s Day as Luce and Co travel through the announcers.

There are four short stories centring around each characters Valentine’s Day giving us readers a chance to learn more about the secondary characters love lives unlike the rest of the series where the focus is mainly on Luce and Daniel.

The first story is Love Where You Least Expect It: The Valentine of Shelby and Miles where the friends blossom into something more whilst trying to help the Lucinda of the past have a romantic Valentine’s Day with Daniel. The second story is Love Lessons: The Valentine of Roland where we get to learn of the only woman Roland has ever loved a mortal girl who Roland loved and lost during this time period and revisits on this Valentine’s Day through an announcer. The third story is Burning Love: The Valentine of Arriane where we learn about Arriane’s great love with a demon girl named Tessriel and how being on opposing sides comes between them. And lastly for the grand finale we have the star couple in Endless Love: The Valentine of Daniel and Lucinda which is the story of the one and only Valentine’s Day that Luce and Daniel ever got to spend together.

Surprisingly my favourite stories where Roland’s and Arriane’s. Both of them have sad heart-breaking tales of lost love which shows a different side to them both as characters and made me feel like I got to know them a little better. I found Arriane’s story especially interesting as it gives us some insight as to why she refuses to be on Lucifer’s side and why she’s a total martyr for Luce and Daniels love. I have to say that I’ve never been a particular fan of Roland but after reading his story and what he selflessly does for his lost love my heart really went out to him and I like him a lot more now.

Fallen in Love doesn’t add anything hugely new to the main storyline of this series but what it does do is give a deeper insight into the lives and loves of the secondary characters. It’s a short, quick, romantic, read that gives a little extra something to the fans of the series and also makes a good refresher of Passion ready for the series finale in Rapture. Although I don’t see why it would strictly need to be read as part of the series it makes a good little in between books read that I’d recommend to fans of the series.