Rating: ★★★★☆
Genre: Romance
Publisher: Canelo
Release Date: January 22, 2018
If I Fall is a heart-wrenching, realistic story of four friends who realize life doesn’t always turn out the way you expect. Torn apart by secrets and internal struggles, who will catch them when they all hit rock bottom?
If I Fall opens with four college students—JJ, Layla, Jonas, and Connie—dreaming about their future. They have it all figured out, as college students do. JJ will become a fitness instructor, Layla will be a psychiatrist, Connie will be a journalist, and Jonas will become an attorney. And, of course, they’ll all live happily ever after.
Flash forward fifteen years, and life hasn’t turned out exactly how they planned. Despite still being good friends, they’re all keeping secrets from each other, and these secrets are threatening to weigh them down. Jonas is bucking for a partner position, and in the meantime, he’s starting to bow under the stress of his job and his resentment towards his boss is growing to unhealthy heights. JJ has become a womanizer, alone and seeking the love he lost in college. Layla’s convinced her mother has dementia, but she’s afraid to get her diagnosed, because for now, she can live in denial, but once it’s official, the problem becomes all too real. Connie is a stay-at-home mother running a blog and trying her best to support her husband, Jonas.
Everything comes to a head as their worlds fall apart, and though they swore to be there for each other, they’re all hiding a secret that has the potential to destroy their worlds. A dark presence from JJ’s past, one he’s refused to tell anyone about, has come to call. Layla realizes she can’t care for her mother and have a life of her own. Jonas begins to resent all the pressure he’s under and goes on a self-destructive bent. And Connie is realizing that maybe her marriage is beyond saving.
All four find themselves falling, hitting rock bottom, and in their most desperate moments, they contemplate the truth about life and whether it’s even worth living.
The Good:
- Ella Harper creates fabulous, relatable characters. As the book is character-driven, this is important. They ranged the emotional gambit, and every one of them felt realistic and fleshed-out. More importantly, I cared about them, because their situations were ones that people I’ve known have faced, and the way they approached them felt genuine and authentic.
- There’s a very strong theme of falling and having someone to catch you that carried throughout the book, and that was really well done. It was thought-provoking and, at times, gut-wrenching. By the end, it was clear what a devastating effect secrets can have, even when they’re well-intended. Sometimes soldiering on isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
- I couldn’t put it down. I went without sleep to finish this book, because by midway through, I was fully invested. I could see things spiraling, and of course I wanted a happy ending, and darn it, I was going to see it through at that point.
- If I Fall touches on a lot of very painful life events, but it doesn’t go easy on it. It shows the struggles for what they are, all the messy, brutalness of it. At the same time, there are plenty of funny moments. It’s not all doom and gloom. At the heart of the characters, like people, they want to be happy and lead good lives, regardless of the circumstances they find themselves in.
The Bad:
- The book opens with a prologue. It’s intentionally kept mysterious, but there’s no indication of how it fits in with the story. Names are intentionally not used. It’s not mentioned or brought up again until almost 90% of the way through the book. I didn’t even know where it sat in the timeline. I found that extremely frustrating. It all made sense and tied up nicely in the end, of course, but I found the lead-in with that more of a detriment than anything.
- At some points, especially towards the middle of the book, the struggles became repetitive. It was a will she/won’t she situation, especially with Connie, to the point where I just wanted to shake her and tell her to make a decision and move on with it. This is a double-edged sword, because it’s realistic, and the way the character approached her struggles was realistic, but at the same time, it was annoying to read.
- Jonas. Just everything about his character by mid-story was ugh. I guess you can’t like everyone in life, so this is also a double-edged sword. The character is realistic. But that doesn’t make him likable. But since he’s a point of view character, it makes it hard getting through his chapters when you just can’t stand the guy.
- The end wrapped up far too quickly and too neatly. I don’t want to give any spoilers away, but I will say that it felt extremely rushed. The end end was fine, and I was content with the actual ending, but the denouement left much to be desired. I’ll just leave it at that.
All in all, I’d give it a solid four stars. It starts a little slow, which is to be expected for a character-driven novel, as you get used to the characters and start to get attached. But as I said, I couldn’t put it down once it built up. The struggle was so realistic, and I easily empathized with them all. In the end, the themes are things we all face: how do we cope when life doesn’t turn out the way we had expected, and who will pull us up when we hit rock bottom? If I Fall would definitely make my 2018 must-read list.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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