Unforgiven

Unforgiven is the fifth book in Lauren Kate’s Fallen series, the young adult paranormal romance saga that took off in 2009 with the original Fallen and ran through several follow up novels and a feature film adaptation. By the time Unforgiven arrived in 2015, the main story of Lucinda Price and Daniel Grigori had reached its conclusion, and Kate turned her attention to other characters in the wider universe.

This novel centers on Cam Briel, the angel who has been Daniel’s rival for centuries and who has been waiting for his own chance at redemption. Cam strikes a desperate bargain. He has fifteen days to win the heart of a woman he has loved across multiple lifetimes, a woman who has now been reincarnated again, a woman who does not remember him at all and is dating someone else. The premise gives Kate room to write the kind of romantic obsession that fans of the series came for, with all the angel mythology and the eternal love themes intact.

Kate is good at building atmosphere. The settings, often coastal and slightly otherworldly, give her romances a particular flavor that is harder to find in pure contemporary work. The fallen angel mythology she developed across the series has its own internal logic, and Cam’s backstory across the various books makes him one of the more interesting figures in the wider mythology.

For fans of the original Fallen series, Unforgiven is a satisfying continuation that does not require rereading the earlier books to follow. For new readers, starting with Fallen is the better entry point. Kate’s audience overlaps significantly with readers of Cassandra Clare, Becca Fitzpatrick, Aprilynne Pike, and the wider paranormal YA boom of the late 2000s and early 2010s. Anyone nostalgic for that period will find this novel scratches the right itch.