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77 of 81 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Haunting, heartbreaking, beautiful, February 7, 2010
This review is from: Before I Fall (Hardcover)
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Friday, February 12th should be just another average day for popular, beautiful Samantha Kingston. But it's far from it--her ride home after a late-night party ends in a car accident, only when Sam wakes up, it's Friday, February 12th again. Forced to re-live the last day of her life seven times, Sam struggles to understand the meaning behind these experiences and the significance in her own life and actions. Because only when she can get her last day exactly right will she ever be able to take the next step.
With keen insights and startling candidness, Lauren Oliver's debut novel is a frank, if not at times brutal look at high school social circles and the careless cruelties and bullying that occurs on a daily basis. Sam is one of the mean girls, and she shrugs off her biting words and actions as something that just happens, collateral damage of living through high school. But through every complex and carefully plotted event, Oliver peels back the layers of Sam's life and teaches us all that every little deed has a consequence, and no act goes unnoticed. Though Sam is by no means a likable character at the beginning of the novel, as her character is revealed and she learns a thing or two about the things she has done in her life and the person she has become, she morphs into a true, selfless, and caring heroine, despite her many flaws. The story line is addicting and suspenseful. and as each "day" passes and Sam begins to get things right, the question that has been looming in the back of your mind since the end of the first chapter--What will happen to Sam?--becomes more and more urgent. Oliver is skillful at wielding suspense and heartbreak, making you think hard about the value of your own life and actions.
Before I Fall is a haunting and beautiful book. It will float around at the back of your mind long after you've read it.
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37 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you knew THEN what you know NOW- what would you do?, February 21, 2010
This review is from: Before I Fall (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Sam is the kind of girl we can all hate. Popular, snotty, superior. In life, you could have pointed out her bad behavoir and she probably would have laughed in your face, or honestly, not cared at all. But, in death she is forced to take a good, long look at every choice she has made in her relatively short lifetime.
We get to know Sam and her friends at the beginning of the story, leading up to a crash that takes Sam's life. You have to be patient as you are introduced to them because they are not likeable at all. Just when you think you've had enough of them, they are in a deadly crash. That's not the end of the story, though, only the beginning.
Sam goes into a sort of sleep following the accident and awakens to relive her last day. Will changing something along the way lead to a different result? She tries, and tries again, and again. In fact she gets numerous attempts to "perfect" her last day, hoping she can make the most of her life...and her death if can't undo the accident.
This is not your typical tale of redeeming yourself. It's not so easy to make the changes that Sam needs to make to change fate. She doesn't simply do something new each time she gets a new day. Her first attempts are vastly different with vastly different results. It's not until she puts all the finest pieces together that she thinks she has the best solution. Life is unpredictable and so is death for Sam.
Watching this aggravating girl realize how wrong she has been is satisfying. Seeing her struggle to become a better person with only one day is fascinating. Wondering how (and if) she is going to succeed makes you not want to put this book down. Great read!
Note to parents: This book does contain a lot of references to drinking, drugs and sex, but nothing graphic.
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37 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Book Nerds Review, March 19, 2010
This review is from: Before I Fall (Hardcover)
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!
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