Book Review: Before I Fall

Hello, book bloggers from the Hop and blog readers! Happy Friday! My name is Amy, and I started blogging awhile ago to keep my friends and family up-to-date with all our activities in Colorado. Now we live in Baltimore, so the blog is even more important for sharing our adventures! I've also found I really like the feedback I get from the blog. This week, I'm reviewing "Before I Fall" by Lauren Oliver.

Synopsis from Goodreads: Samantha Kingston has it all—looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend. Friday, February 12th should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it’s her last. The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. In fact, she re-lives the last day of her life seven times, until she realizes that by making even the slightest changes, she may hold more power than she had ever imagined.

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was the best Young Adult book I've read in a long time. It started off a little weak- very "Groundhog Day", and I wasn't crazy about all the characters.

But pretty soon, I was rooting for Samantha (Sam), the main character. She had her faults, but her reactions and her emotions were all so raw and real. You want her to succeed.

I don't want to go into too many details about the plot for fear of spoiling something, but I will say that the writing was excellent, and there were many passages I loved; like this one, which summarizes one of the main themes of the book:

"It amazes me how easy it is for things to change, how easy it is to start off down the same road you always take and wind up somewhere new. Just one false step, one pause, one detour, and you end up with new friends or a bad reputation or a boyfriend or a breakup. ... And it makes me feel, weirdly, like maybe all of these different possibilities exist at the same time, like each moment we live has a thousand other moments layered underneath it that look different."

The book also made me want to look around and really appreciate all the little things I take for granted everyday- the "promise of trees lit up in red and orange like flames and spiced cider, and frost that melts away by noon- layers upon layers of life, always something more, new deeper." And this gem:

"Maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there's a tomorrow. Maybe for you there's one thousand tomorrows, or three thousand, or ten, so much time you can bathe in it, roll around in it, let it slide like coins through your fingers. So much time you can waste it. But for some of us there's only today. And the truth is, you never really know."

Overall, I was very impressed with how complex each and every character turned out to be. Though it starts off that way, this is not your typical high school cliche. And Kent- I loved Kent.

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