Character Analysis
Luce Price starts off as a straight-A student at fancy-shmancy Dover Prep who speaks Latin and French, reads avidly, is well-adjusted in her social circle, and wants to become a psychiatrist and make a real difference in the world by helping people (15.133).
Oh, yeah. She also sees floating creatures she calls shadows everywhere, and boys have a habit of spontaneously combusting when she gets romantic with them.
Turns out that if anyone needs some good old-fashioned psychoanalysis, it's Luce herself.
Shadow Girl
So, about those shadows. Although her parents and her friends can't see them, Luce has been able to see the shadows her entire life, and she knows they're there, lurking around every corner, hiding in dusty alleyways and in the thick of the woods right around twilight. They've never done anything more than scare her, popping up unannounced and making these weird whistling, whispering noises that would always freak her out, and understandably so.
But that's why she can't ride her bike outside anymore.
Hey, we'd be pretty spooked, too.
It's not until Trevor's death that the shadows seem to be able to act on the world around her, and this adds to her growing sense of unease about them.
Oh, yeah, about that death…
It's the mysterious death of Trevor, Luce's first kinda sorta boyfriend, that lands her at Sword & Cross. She doesn't know what happened, though she feels bad that everything thinks she was responsible. (Whether she's upset that, you know, someone close to her died is another question—Luce can be surprisingly self-centered about everything that happens around her, including her friends' deaths. But we digress.)
Life at Sword & Cross is so far removed from Luce's old life at Dover Prep that she might as well be on another planet. The move also does its share of damage to Luce's confidence. She was otherwise a happy, well-adjusted girl, but now she wonders who she is, if she really is as crazy as she's been led to believe, what her friends from Dover Prep now think of her, and if her parents are afraid of her.
Those are all hugely important—not to mention potentially traumatic—questions, because this crisis is happening during Luce's formative years and is playing big role in defining who she is. No wonder she wants to make sure she's making friends—and no wonder she keeps the truth of Trevor's death as close to the vest as possible.
It's okay, Luce. The good news is that the shadows aren't caused by some form of psychosis. The bad news is that you might not make it to your eighteenth birthday.
Again.
So Many Men, So Little Time
We can't talk about Luce without talking about her leading gentlemen, Daniel and Cam, both as smoldering and mysterious as can be, with a real flair for making Luce feel either appreciated or like a bug under a rock.
Sure, you could be argued that Luce is just using Cam for the attention, but flirtation is flattering, especially when you're in a new place and no one knows you yet. When was the last time you liked the idea of someone liking you, even if you didn't necessarily like that person right away? That's Luce in a nutshell. Cam's attention—plus his gifts and his air of confidence and smooth awesomeness—is appealing, a one-way ticket into the cool clique.
The opposite of Mr. Personality Cam is Daniel. To put it mildly, Daniel's behavior is a little erratic. In fact, let's be real: his behavior is a one-way ticket to Go Away. True, we eventually learn the reasoning behind his behavior, but that doesn't mean we have to like it, and at times his snide comments and flat-out putdowns are hurtful and unnecessarily mean.
Okay, sure, Luce does first get drawn to Daniel pretty much just because he's a total dreamboat. Even she admits it. But what keeps her gaze focused on this mysterious new guy with a dress code violation is the feeling she gets when she looks at him: it's like she knows him from somewhere. Maybe it's the mall, or maybe it's the movies. Or maybe it's…a past lifetime?
If you guessed C, you're correct.
Unfortunately, Luce does admit that she has one major flaw—you know, besides seeing shadow creatures hover above her head all the time: she's not good at saying no, especially to guys. This inability creates a lot of the problems with Cam as time goes on, because she can't speak her mind (not that he really gives her the chance to).
As Luce says when she meets Cam at the bar the evening after he and Daniel get into a fight over her, "Cam was a very hard person to say no to, even when she wasn't totally sure what he was asking" (15.34). It could be his magnetic personality, or it could be his fallen-angel charms, but either way, Cam is a sweet-talker, a romancer, a Romeo. Someone as weak-willed as Luce doesn't stand much of a chance against that.
But Luce knows her love for Daniel is stronger than her desire to have Cam think she's special, so she works up the courage to break things off with him.
Sure, we wish we could see a little more of Daniel and Luce together when he's not being a major jerk to her, just so we could make sure the eternal flame of their love is something that can withstand the test of time. But for a guy who's supposedly had to witness his girlfriend die over and over and over, Daniel's still going strong despite it all. Dare we say we're a little impressed?
Not to be outdone, Luce takes the information that she's been dying every seventeen years in stride. It only takes her an hour or two to come to terms with the idea of having lived—and died—through multiple lifetimes.
Will she make it through this lifetime? Or will she die once again at seventeen?
Gotta read the rest of the series to find out. You didn't think Lauren Kate would pass up on some sequel action and spill the beans in the first book, did you?
Luce's Timeline