Rating: 5 stars (Spotlight Review)
It’s difficult not to reveal the end of a story, when the end starts at the beginning. Sam is dead.
Sam, Lindsay, Ally and Elody were driving home from Kent McFuller’s party. Ally and Elody were smoking and the freezing rain was coming in through the cracked windows. Sam had asked the question: if you were about to die, what parts of your life would you want to relive.
For Lindsay it was the day she was accepted into Princeton, Ally wished she could relive her first hook-up with Matt Wilde; Elody played Ally and Matt’s song to piss off Ally. A fight for the iPod ensued. As the fighting got louder, the cigarette smoke thicker, there was a sudden flash of light just before the car flipped off the road in a screech of metal, shattering glass and the smell of fire.
They say just before you die your whole life flashes before your eyes. However, Sam’s final thoughts weren’t a trip down memory lane; it was of a specific day in 4th grade when Lindsay made fun of Vicky Hallinan for being too fat.
So begins Sam’s journey of one specific day in her life that resulted in her death, which will be re-lived seven times until she gets it right.
Before I Fall is an incredibly moving story. Despite the fact that a young girl is reliving the day she died, it’s far from morbid; instead, it carries a strong message told in an incredible voice. In a similar style to the Lovely Bones, you know that the main character/narrator is dead; but, you form an attachment to her anyway—and that goes double for Sam.
Lauren Oliver does an amazing job with her debut novel. The retellings of Sam’s fateful day, which reflects the grieving process, are anything but tedious; instead, they’re poignant, beautiful and bittersweet.
This book will make you fall in love, then break your heart; but, you already knew that going in and, by the end, you wouldn’t have it any other way.
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Reading level: Young Adult
Hardcover: 480 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins (March 2, 2010)
ISBN-13: 978-0061726804