Before I Fall
Ratings146
Average rating3.8
I dare anyone to put this book down.
I couldn't.
My own deadline was on hold for a day while I devoured this poignant story from cover to cover.
“What if you only had one day to live...“
For teenager Sam Kingston, she finds out.
Had a lump in my throat several times.
Great read.
Loved this book. Love how complex the characters are, even the ones who seem like they're going to be one-dimensional.
(reread 5/27/12)
Stayed up til 3:30 AM to finish it. Fucked me up a little. I was reading it at the gym and had to stop because I started crying. I had a lot of feelings about this book.
That's the way I feel, at least: like there's a real me and a reflection of me, and I have no way of telling which is which.
This is sort of “Groundhog's Day” meets “Thirteen Reason's Why. “ It follows some of the “ Mean Girls” at school and the change of heart one of them experiences following a car crash. I found some of the mean girl behavior disturbingly accurate and it's a painful story at some points. The ending not quite what I expected but still got it's point across.
Connecticut – Part of my United States of YA project to read (at least) one YA per state.
update: 17/10/2020: watched the movie and LOVED it and its kinda made me change my view on the book a lil. I'm raising it up one star :)
I have a feeling the movie will be better. It was an alright book, didn't like it or dislike it.
The main character is stupid. Thats all I have to say,,, I only read this so I could watch the movie but I don't regret reading it. It made me think about death and how it affects others. I'm excited to watch the movie now :)
I've read it before, but I liked it better this time. Even though it's still unsatisfying, it's still so much better than Delirium and makes me hope that Lauren Oliver will write more contemporary things.
[8th Grade]
I read this as an alternate project. The class was reading “To Kill A Mockingbird”, but my mom felt I was too young to read it so requested that the teacher give me an alternate assignment. The assignment was this book.
I finished it in the span of a few hours in a literal (hi welcome to) Chili's. This book was just so moving and emotional that it took a lot of will to not cry in the restaurant. This book taught me to value your family, friends, and every day you have as if it's your last.
The assignment was to write an essay on how the plot of the book changed me as a reader and how the characters decisions influenced me as a person. I never did the assignment.
Intriguing premise mostly plays out like an after school special. Got it on Audible because it got good reviews and is going to be a movie. I imagine it'll be better as a movie. As a book it's ... YA I guess. I've gotten used to expecting that popular YA resonate with adults as well as kids but this feels mostly like sure, I guess a teen might get something out of it.
Samantha Kingston mengalami kecelakaan mobil ketika pulang dari pesta Kent, bersama 3 sahabatnya, Lindsay, Elody & Ally. Namun ketika bangun keesokan harinya dia menemukan dirinya berada di pagi hari jumat, sebelum kecelakaan itu terjadi. Jadilah dia mengulang kembali hari jumat itu. Itu terjadi terus, setiap malam, entah seperti apapun malamnya berakhir, dia kembali ke pagu hari jumat. Apa yang sebenarnya terjadi? ADakah sesuatu yang seharusnya dia lakukan atau tidak dia lakukan?
Buku ini cukup bagus menurutku, untuk remaja, begitu banyak pesan yg terselip di dalamnya. Sayangnya belum ada terjemahan Bahasa Indonesia nya. Endingnya juga cukup mengharukan.
This is the first book of Oliver's that I've read, and I want to read more of her! Great summer beach book.
Okay, let's be honest. I am not the target market for Before I Fall. I think that this novel is mostly marketed towards teenage girls, and even then, only those teenage girls who can stand the main character (more on that in a minute). I think that, as a guy, I would not necessarily be able to comment on certain elements of this novel, like the interactions between the female characters being believable ect, But, then again, perhaps an outside opinion is needed to see these characters in a more objective light. In either case, take this review as my opinion, and with a hint of salt.
How much you like Before I Fall depends on how much one can sand the first part of the novel and Samantha Kingston, the main character. Samantha is a girl who is at the top of the social high school pyramid. She and her friends can have and do anything they want without any negative consequences. In short, she is very selfish, hurtful, and annoying, so, when she dies in a car accident coming home from a late-night party, and wakes up starting that same day all over again I wondered what was going to happen. It turns out that she will keep waking up on the same day, Feb 12th, until she can learn valuable lessons about how to treat others and how one can affect so many lives. During the first part of the novel, the main character and her friends are simply insufferable. They are mean, impulsive, and rude to others. Now, I understand that that is the point. We are, essentially, seeing what a bully's life is like, as a way to deliver a lesson to the reader, but still, it is really annoying. The only thing that made me want to continue reading was the fact that it fulfills Common Core state standards, and, as an aspiring teacher, I might as well read it anyway. If you are not, and don't care about those things, you may have trouble getting through the first half of the novel.
After a death is revealed to have happened, right at around the middle of the book, is when things really begin to move, relatively speaking. I say relatively because one of the things that really hurts this book is it's length and pacing. It is about 470 pages long (I listened to it on audio, so this is a guesstimation). This, along with the writings of meaningless philosophical statements means that the book often crawls along when it should move quickly.Samantha is so wrapped up in her own pretentiousness that I wonder what editor allowed this book to be this long in the first place. It easily could be 70 to 100 pages shorter and I would not be sorry for it. Now, don't misunderstand me, I don't always mind philosophical statements, but they have to be done well, mostly at the end of the book to show the reader how much the main character is or has changed. Here, however, the main character starts spouting these comments right at the beginning. This, along with the law of Diminishing Returns, means that the more she spouts these ‘deep' platitudes, means that they feel less and less impactful until they feel cheap.
Yet, don't let that scare you away. I think that most of the problems I had with this book has to do with that I listened to it on audio book. The narrator is excellent at giving the voices to the characters, and whatnot, but I think that listening to it allows for some of the repetitive statements and philosophical babble to become more grading than had I just read it in regular old book format. And I think this also shows the symbiotic feelings I had toward this book: Sam is grading on my nerves, so the book seems longer, and the book is so long that Sam becomes grading to me. Nevertheless, I can see the authors positives. She writes it in a voice that I personally could really get into and found enjoyable, when there wasn't tons of empty philosophical statements to read. I think the characters reacted in a way that was believable (See caveat above), and I did laugh at some of the situations that were meant to be funny. I also liked Kent, and how Sam managed to fall in love with him was believable, at least to me. While I still think that this book has some problems, it was one that I somewhat liked, if it tended to be extremely slow at times. It does teach us that one's life can affect so many different people. I recommend picking this one up from a friend or the library if you think it interests you. I give it a two out of five.