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My rating: 3 stars
***Copy of the book provided by All Night Reads via Netgalley in exchange for honest review***
Book summary:
Two years after her best friend was involved in a car accident that caused a traumatic brain injury, Lottie Anders is ready to start her freshman year of college. Ready to move on. Ready to start forgetting the night that ripped her life apart.
Her plans come to a screeching halt when not one, but both brothers responsible for the accident end up back in her life again.
Zack is cruel, selfish and constantly rubbing what happened to her friend in Lottie's face.
Zan is different. He listens to her awkward ramblings. He loves "To Kill a Mockingbird" as much as she does, and his dark eyes are irresistible. His words are few and far between, but when he does speak, she can't help but listen.
The trouble is, Zan was the driver in the accident, and now Lottie's discovered he lied to her about what happened that night. Now she must decide if trusting him again will lead to real forgiveness, or deeper heartache.
What happens when you combine Star Wars, Nicholas Sparks, Oprah
and eighteen year old kids?
I have to be honest here and say that I didn't like this book very much. I expected so much more, it has lot of potential to be a great, summer read, but at times I felt like I've been reading one big compilation of every possible cliché. Generally, that is the biggest problem with readers turned to be new authors (with all due respect, I am not trying to be mean or anything like that - just stating the fact). Whole time you keep thinking "Oh, that's so Kellan Kyle!" or "It reminds me of Beautiful Disaster." or "I think something similar happened in Easy by Tammara Webber." I know that most of the readers will enjoy reading Deeper We Fall exactly because of that. It's just that I am not one of them.
I know that my friends will know which was the first thing that made me want to scream. To Kill a Mockingbird. I believe that that book is one of the biggest American stereotypes. Like Paris with croissants and berets. Other thing? Virgins. Although, Lottie wasn't obnoxious as they can be in books like this. Third? Where do you people find those stupid nicknames??? Fourth? Melodrama worthy of Esmeralda or Dallas.
Felicity meets High School Musical
That would be the easiest way for me to describe this book. "Older" generation remembers popular TV show about girl who follows her high school crush to college and we all know about that other disaster that makes your ears and eyes bleed. No, no one sings or dances here.
I love reading about college experience. Heck, I was all about new adult more than a decade before everyone started to use that term. That was part of the story I liked the best. Deeper We Fall started really good. You get the idea where will things go, but you still enjoy reading about it because you want to see how did all played out. I liked the way Chelsea Cameron combined what is going on in present and mixed it with hints of the past events, but I just knew that whole big secret thing will not be quite satisfying part of the plot.
I know that most of the kids thinks that when they go away at college, they will find this new, big happy family. That is so not true, but it doesn't mean that I don't like reading books with that kind of fantasy twist. It's up to the author would he/she pull it off or not. One thing that didn't make it work for me was the way all characters talk. It's all Jedi/Gandhi/Oprah/Sparks wisdom mixed with dash of Rumi ( who, by the way, talks mostly about ways to get closer to God and not about actual love - Sufi symbols are religious and they have quite specific meanings, readers do not have much freedom in their interpretation - if you are talking about traditional approach to this type of poetry).
Ignoring the fact that Deeper We Fall is labeled as new adult, I think younger readers will love this book more than actual first year students, unless you are suffering form "forever-sixteen syndrome" . If you are fan of Colleen Hoover, Rebecca Donovan, Nicole Williams, Abbi Glines or Fisher Amelie, Deeper We Fall is perfect choice for you.
Until next time,
I agree that this book had a lot of potential, but fell flat. I was actually looking forward to the second book, which focuses on Lottie's roomate. Great review!
ReplyDelete-Marianne @ Boricuan Bookworms
I am not so sure that I'll read sequel - I have too much books on my TBR list anyhow and I don't want to read something that doesn't excite me.
DeleteThank you, Marianne.