Before I Fall

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.