Book Review: "Before I Fall"

                Before I Fall, by Lauren Oliver, is the first fiction novel I have read in quite a while. I absolutely loved it! It is one of my new favorite books. This book has a great plot, characters, emotions, and just everything. I loved the “Groundhog Day”-esque situation that the main character, Samantha, is thrown into. Oliver does a phenomenal job capturing the high school cliques in this book.

One of the most interesting things in this book was the different scenarios in which Samantha took part in. When you finish reading this book, you realize that this book took place over the span of one day and that day was the same day over and over again, but it seemed much longer because Samantha relives it so many times. Each day was lived differently and embraced different emotions. For example, one day Samantha had this “go-getter” attitude and the next day was a complete day and night difference, with Sam displaying a “Debbie-Downer” mood. Oliver is so descriptive and her writing is utterly beautiful. My favorite quote from the book is, “That's when I realized that certain moments go on forever. Even after they're over they still go on, even after you're dead and buried, those moments are lasting still, backward and forward, on into infinity. They are everything and everywhere all at once.
They are the meaning.”

                 With the same day being lived over and over again, it made it difficult to remember what exactly what was going on. Another thing I found somewhat difficult with this book, was the way each day ended. Each day ended, naturally, when Samantha went to sleep and then woke up the next day, reliving the day over again. It was difficult at some points to recognize when a new day of the cycle was beginning, until you got further into the chapter. The chapters were another thing I didn’t really care for. As I have said before I like to end on a chapter and not in the middle. This book was awkwardly split up. There were sub-chapters within each of the chapters, for example, the first chapter was 81 pages. With these longer chapters, I found that I had to reread some of the parts, to recap on what was going on. Regardless of the criticisms, I greatly enjoyed this book. It is the perfect combination of high emotion and phenomenally written characters. I highly recommend Before I Fall to anyone looking for a captivating read.