Book Nerds Review

Home ยป Before I Fall

Anna "Book Nerds" @ 2010-03-19

Before I Fall

$13.99
Overall, BEFORE I FALL was, to say the least, a very interesting read. After looking around and seeing other reviews I can say I'm not quite as smitten with it as most people are. The reason I think is boiled down to movies. I'm a really big movie fan, and a lot of the movies I watch are somewhat like BEFORE I FALL in that they always require you to guess constantly as to how it will end, those are just the type of movies I like. Books, however, are not an instant gratification, it's not just an hour or two until you get to the end, it's 480 pages (in the case of BEFORE I FALL, anyway) of words that take much longer to get through. I think that's where, for me, BEFORE I FALL falters, it's an brilliant concept, but when it runs the course of repetitiveness on a 480 page scale I found myself slowly dragging myself through it. However, I think much of the problem I had was because of the size of the book and the constant repetitiveness of it, because it certainly wasn't with the writing or the general concept of the novel.

Lauren also gave an interview on the First Look part of the B&N forum where she said "I have two hopes for you as you begin to read Before I Fall. The first is simply this: I hope that in the beginning, you do not like the main character, Samantha, or her three best friends. I hope you find them mean, petty, self-absorbed, and superficial." ... "My second hope is more conventional. I hope that by the end of the book you will love Sam, and that you will have come to a deeper understanding of her friends, with all of their faults and frailties." -- I'm gonna have to say it, that even in the end I didn't love Sam. Thought more of her? Maybe. Loved her? No. For me Samantha's character as a whole was neverendingly whiney. Her friends were also nothing short of complete bitches. While they were slightly more compassionate to her, they still, especially Lindsay, treated her like crap for the most part. I think other than the size of the novel itself, my main issue is that the bullying was not... `properly' addressed throughout the book. It's mentioned and there are little things that happen that sort of mock Lindsay and her crew, but there is no overall sense of punishment, and I hate that. Especially for people who are so out rightly horrible. I wish that as a final stand Sam had stood up to them a little more strongly and kind of put them in their place other than her sideways remarks here and there.

Having said that though, in the end I did enjoy BEFORE I FALL, and Lauren is a wonderful writer, and I honestly look forward to seeing what she comes up with next. She really managed to bring the story and Sam's surroundings to life, and present the story in a very realistic way. The book itself is a little long, the main character is a little whiney, and the addressing of the major sub-plot (bullying) was a little weak, but hey, we can't all be perfect!