Before I Fall

Author: Lauren Oliver
Recommended Age: 14+
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN-10: 006172680X
ISBN-13: 978-0061726804
Year Published: 2010
No. Pages: 470
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Main Character Gender: Female
Read & Reviewed by: Kat


Maybe...
“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. But for some of us, there’s only today. And the truth is, you never really know.”

Samantha Kingston has it all. Popularity, three amazing best friends and a boyfriend half the girls in the school swoon over. What more could she want? So this Friday should just be another awesome day but it turns out to be her last. Somehow, she gets a chance to live her last day over and over again, and gain some perspective. She has a chance to redeem her wrongs.

At first, I hated Sam and her friends; they were spiteful and ignorant. They were mean just because they could be, and found flaws in everyone, creating and maintaining the high school social hierarchy. But as she relives the day of her death a total of seven times, Sam views the world differently, realizing her eyes were open, but she wasn’t seeing. She takes a stand for herself and for what is right. Sam’s understanding of the world grows, and she evolves as a character, from someone shallow to a deeper caring individual. I saw that although Sam’s attitude and perspectives changed, her underlying nature stayed the same.

In the beginning, I worried Before I Fall would be boring- just the same day over and over again. However, Lauren Oliver keeps everything interesting by weaving new threads together and introducing new relationships to keep me engaged in this tightly-tuned plot. At times, it became difficult to distinguish what happened on what day, because it is always the same day played out differently each time. This book should be read with great attention to capture everything Oliver has created.

Oliver was able to open my eyes to see what high school may be like in big cities, and how it can be different for each person. The characters were believable, because they spoke and acted like normal teenagers. I thought Sam's high school life was a bit exaggerated, but that helped emphasize the themes of this book; tangled relationships, importance of family, the pressure of popularity, kindness, the beauty of life, and letting go.

Before I Fall was written in first person, which gave me someone to be with; Sam. Oliver's action-packed plot propelled me through this book as I devoured it in one day.