Book Review: Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Publisher: HarperCollins

Publish Date: March 2, 2010

Hardcover, 470 pages

My Review:
Imagine going into your last day of life and treating it like all others - don't we all since we never know when that last day is.  Now imagine waking up after a fateful accident to relive that day over and over until you get things right.  That is what Samantha Kingston has to do in this book.  And it is a powerful story.

While at first it seems a little repetitive (and of course if you live the same day over and over it is.  But then things begin to click for Samantha, she grows and she learns and then her experiences become so much more.  This book just continues to build and build until it finally reaches the end.  And the end and the book as a whole will stick with you for awhile.

I love this breed of YA books that take the popular kids, the mean girls, what have you, and shows their human side too.  Before I Fall does a wonderful job of this and I think it can help teenagers (and people of all ages) evaluate the choices they make on a daily basis and see how things affect not just themselves and their small group of friends, but others all around them.  It's a powerful message wrapped up in a book with a plot that makes the book hard to put down.

I found myself lost in Sam's world, getting to know her friends and her and her school.  It was a fascinating ride and while I didn't like Sam much in the beginning I was cheering for her in the end.  If you like books like Thirteen Reasons Why and some of the more serious YA books, then this is a book for you.  It will stay with me for quite awhile and I'm glad I read about it on other book blogs and picked this one up to read.  I truly believe it will be in my top 10 books of the year.

My Rating;  4.75/5.0


About the Book:
What if you had only one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life?

Samantha Kingston has it all—looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend. Friday, February 12th should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it’s her last. The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. In fact, she re-lives the last day of her life seven times, until she realizes that by making even the slightest changes, she may hold more power than she had ever imagined.

About the Author (from Goodreads.com):
Lauren Oliver comes from a family of writers and so has always (mistakenly) believed that spending hours in front of the computer every day, mulling over the difference between “chortling” and “chuckling,” is normal. She has always been an avid reader.

She attended the University of Chicago, where she continued to be as impractical as possible by majoring in philosophy and literature. After college, she attended the MFA program at NYU and worked briefly as the world’s worst editorial assistant, and only marginally better assistant editor, at a major publishing house in New York. Her major career contributions during this time were flouting the corporate dress code at every possible turn and repeatedly breaking the printer. Before I Fall is her first published novel.

She is deeply grateful for the chance to continue writing, as she has never been particularly good at anything else.

Her website.
Her blog.
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An interesting article about Lauren Oliver at the Publisher's Weekly site.

FTC Information: I checked this book out from my wonderful local library for my reading pleasure.  I have Amazon links on my review pages but I do not make any money from these because of NC laws.  I put them solely for people to check out the books on a retail site.