Friday, August 22, 2014

This is Falling

Ginger Scott

Publisher: Ginger Scott
Publication Date: August 29, 2014
Pages: 281
Genre: New Adult Romance
Source: ARC from Ginger Scott 

First, I had to remember how to breathe. Then, I had to learn how to survive. Two years, three months and sixteen days had passed since I was the Rowe Stanton from before, since tragedy stole my youth and my heart went along with it. 

When I left for college, I put a thousand miles between my future and my past. I’d made a choice—I was going to cross back to the other side, to live with the living. I just didn’t know how. 


And then I met Nate Preeter. 


 An All-American baseball player, Nate wasn’t supposed to notice a ghost-of-a-girl like me. But he did. He shouldn’t want to know my name. But he did. And when he learned my secret and saw the scars it left behind, he was supposed to run. But he didn’t. 


My heart was dead, and I was never supposed to belong to anyone. But Nate Preeter had me feeling, and he made me want to be his. He showed me everything I was missing. 


And then he showed me how to fall.

This is Falling was not what I expected at all, but it a really good way. 

Rowe was one of the most realistically written characters I’ve had the pleasure of reading in a long time. I absolutely loved this story and if it was told just from her point of view, I would have given this book five stars, no question. Rowe’s story arch was beautifully done; it was Nate’s story I had a problem with. Sure, hearing how much he loved Rowe all the time was definitely swoon worthy, but that’s all he really did. As much as I loved him, we really didn’t need the interjections of his point of view. This was Rowe’s story of recovery, and even though Nate helped her, it wasn’t his story. He finds out some things and it takes away a lot of the tension for when Rowe finds them out.

Despite that, I loved Rowe and Nate together. I was a little leery at first because it seemed like instalove for a second, but it was so much more than that. Rowe was great as a female lead and Cass and Paige were awesome side characters. They all had their own distinct personalities, but it all worked together really well. Rowe was the perfect balance of self-preservation, but also wanting to move forward in her life, something I think a lot of people can relate to. My only issue with Cass wasn’t really an issue until I read the first chapter of the next book in the back of This is Falling. There, it reveals something really important about her health that probably should have been addressed in the first book, and actually would have made the first book better. Rowe lets Cass in when she reveals her past, and looking back now, it’s weird that Cass didn’t do the same.

Nate was great, really. But his parts were only ever about Rowe. His narration reminded me of Jamie McGuire’s Maddox boys: hot-headed, jealous and obsessed with a single girl, but also suddenly very patient and caring and sweet with this girl. Nate isn’t a Maddox brother, though, so I was looking for something different, but there really wasn’t anything to make him stand out. I think that his back story could have been almost as heart wrenching as Rowe’s, as he caused his brother Ty to become paralyzed. But that whole idea is just brushed under the rug. The one thing I did like about him was his sense of humor and a few of the funny one liners in his narration. While he did offer some comic relief in the novel, I don’t think it was necessary and would have been just fine fully from Rowe’s point of view.


Other than my issue with Nate’s point of view and Cass’s slip up, I loved This is Falling. Rowe’s struggles with her past and how to move on now that she’s in college are perfectly written. I think that school shootings are a very hard topic to write about, especially with their increasing frequency in our lives, but Ginger Scott handled it very well. I haven’t previously read any of her books, but if they’re all as good as This is Falling, I’m definitely going to have to, and I suggest you do too.



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