Lauren Oliver
HarperCollins (2010)
ISBN 9780061726804
Reviewed by Avni Gupta (age 17) for Reader Views (10/10)
When I received “Before I Fall” by Lauren Oliver, I was very excited about reading it. As I kept on getting into it, however, I kept on liking it less and less. It’s not that the ideas that the book was talking about were not of interest to me, it was that the main character was so unlikable! Sam was snobbish and mean throughout most of the novel! She was also a huge cheater! And why did she seduce her math teacher?! I totally would have been more into the novel if it hadn’t have been her math teacher! Although I am glad that she changed by the end of the novel, getting to her change in attitude and behavior was grating on my nerves.
This book starts out by telling us that Sam has the “perfect” life. She’s the most popular girl in school and her boyfriend is the most popular boy in school. Sam is about to get everything that she could ever want for Valentine’s Day this year. But then the unthinkable happens. Sam gets killed in a car crash! Now Sam re-lives that day everyday. Because of this, she begins to act out in ways such as doing drugs and seducing math teachers. Now her “life” is tunneling out of control!
Although this book was a little bit of a disappointment, I really liked the cover of it. I know that one is never supposed to judge a book based on its cover, but the cover of this book is just amazing! The grass that is half covering her face leads the reader to believe that something bad, i.e., death, is going to befall her before the novel is finished. The green of her eyes on the cover portray her intense feelings to the reader as soon as the reader picks up the book! When I first saw the book, those eyes seemed to be calling out to me, asking me to help them, and the person attached to those eyes, become a better person. The cover of “Before I Fall,” really spoke to me, making it so that I wanted to read this book.
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