Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Before I continue crying some more, I promised I'd actually get to a review on time for once.

I'm very late to the game on this one. I kept hearing about it and hearing about it, and hearing so much PRAISE about it, that I should have picked it up a long time ago. But to be honest, I think I was scared to. The title and the cover, and then the jacket as well, all let you know that this story is about a girl that dies. She dies. There's no point in letting you think that once the seven days are up, she can somehow win her life back with a good deed or two. And I knew that it would probably be very amazing. But I didn't tell myself that. No, I tried to keep myself from reading it by saying that it wasn't fantasy, and it was probably about catty popular girls and somehow still depressing because one of them dies. So, I put it off.

Then I read DELIRIUM by Lauren Oliver. I was enraptured and totally caught up with this author's way of describing the world, even in a futuristic fictional one that would probably never be, I totally understood that she was, and could only be, talking about our world. Us. I fell in love with that story. And then I thought, why not? Pick up BEFORE I FALL. It might be depressing, but Lauren Oliver's already opened your eyes once, maybe she'll do it again. And I expected BEFORE I FALL to be good. I expected it to be sad, but oh so powerful. What I didn't expect?

That it would literally grab a hold of my soul and transform me. That it would literally open my eyes up to myself.

That probably sounds pretty dramatic. Probably something that a sap would say and probably not as reliable coming from an unknown source that's trying to recommend a book to you. But it's true...

I can't explain how this book has touched me. It's a personal story. All I want to say about it is that I cried during all of Sam's scenes with Izzy (her little sister) because I once had an older brother, and I wondered what he might've been thinking those couple of years in the hospital when he was spending time with his baby sister. I couldn't stop crying when Sam accepted her fate and during her last moment in her own fictional world. That's how good this story is.

I just know that Lauren Oliver has this ability to make the most amazing characters. Characters so real that you feel like you've known them your whole life. I can't stand letting Sam go. And even after I turned the last page, trying really hard to ignore the tears running down my cheeks, my fingers kept fumbling for more, not wanting to let go of her. Not wanting her life to end. And I knew how it would end all along, but like she says in the book. We still hope. We're still human...

If there's any book in the world, I could say without a doubt has helped shape me or moved my heart in some form or another, it's BEFORE I FALL. Read it and you'll know. I hope you do.



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