Falling into Place by Amy Zhang (Book Review)
On the day Liz
Emerson tries to die, they had reviewed Newton’s laws of motion in
physics class. Then, after school, she put them into practice by running
her Mercedes off the road. Why? Why did Liz Emerson decide that the world would be better off without her? Why did she give up? Vividly told by an unexpected and surprising narrator, this heartbreaking and nonlinear novel pieces together the short and devastating life of Meridian High’s most popular junior girl. Mass, acceleration, momentum, force—Liz didn’t understand it in physics, and even as her Mercedes hurtles toward the tree, she doesn’t understand it now. How do we impact one another? How do our actions reverberate? What does it mean to be a friend? To love someone? To be a daughter? Or a mother? Is life truly more than cause and effect? Amy Zhang’s haunting and universal story will appeal to fans of Lauren Oliver, Gayle Forman, and Jay Asher.
I had a hard time rating this book. While I loved this book, I did have some problems with it. During the course of this book we follow friends and family of Liz Emerson, who just drove her car off the road. One thing though, no one knows that she tried to commit suicide; Liz staged it so that it looked like an accident. As you go through the book you get to learn more about Liz, her friends, and why Liz decided to end her life.
I went into this book expecting to cry, and I mean ugly cry. I cried a little bit (a few tears running down my cheeks), but I didn't ugly cry. I also found that I did not cry because of Liz, I cried for her friends. I could not connect with Liz. I felt bad for her, but I found her annoying. I feel like the side characters in the story had it tougher than Liz. Don't get me wrong; they all had it tough, but I connected more with them.
The writing style of this book was really hard for me to get into. For the first half of the book it is really choppy and confusing because of the way the story jumps around. As the story goes on and we learn more about the characters and why they do what they do, the story come together and I just got caught up in the beautiful writing style. It really surprised me that my opinion on the writing style could change so quickly! It overall made the story better in my opinion.
I loved seeing the characters develop through out this book. The cool thing is that we get to look back on the past of all the characters, as well as see how they deal with the tragedy at hand. Because we got to see all the characters in the past, you could really see how much they had grown or gone downhill. I feel like this created a really cool environment that made you care for the characters even more.
Overall, this was a gut wrenching book about a very serious topic. With characters that you can't help but feel bad for, I certainly loved this book.
4/5 Points
*Links*
Comments
Post a Comment
Whatcha thinking?