Review: Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang

Falling Into Place
by Amy Zhang
Website | Twitter | Facebook

Publication Date: September 9th 2014
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9780062295040
Genre: Young Adult | Contemporary
Source: Edelweiss

Add to Goodreads

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository

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. (Goodreads)

I was super curious to read Falling Into Place, as I’ve heard really good things about the book, and I couldn’t wait to dive into the story. Having finished this book, which definitely did not disappoint, I am really looking forward to reading more by this author in the future.

Falling Into Place is the story or Liz Emerson, the most popular girl in her school’s junior class, who decides to use Newton’s 3 laws of motion to run her Mercedes off the road and take her own life.  What would the world be like with Liz? How many people’s lives would have been different? This is the story of the how and the why.

The main character in the story, Liz, and her two best friends, Kennie and Julia, were extremely hard characters to like. These girls were the definition of ‘mean girls’ and ‘bullies’. They were cruel and vindictive and often times did bad things to people just to make themselves feel better. Some of the things that they had done to people in the past were really hard to read about. Liz was obviously the leader of the little group, and she was quite the bully in her own right. And in the beginning of the book you are really going to hate these three girls; Liz especially. But as you get through the book, you come to see that the lives for these girls are far from perfect, and while you don’t agree with what they do, you come to understand them a bit, and at times, can even relate to them. That didn’t really make me like them much more, but I felt I understood them better. These girls needed help in the worst way possible, and unfortunately, it takes something drastic happening for each of them to realize that.

Falling Into Place discusses a lot of issues that teenagers face today, including sex, drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, depression, bullying and all the repercussions on these actions. All of these issues were very well detailed as well.

The story was told between flashbacks and present day, after the accident. The story has many different narrators, ones that have had some kind of interplay with Liz in some form or another, but there was one specific narrator for Liz, and that person came as a bit of a surprise. This book was a really quick read for me; I read it in just a few short hours. Most of the storyline was super uncomfortable to read at times. However, the story was very addictive, and I couldn’t put the book down because I needed to know what was going to happen next.  The writing in this book was highly addictive.

Overall; while I didn’t care for the characters in this book at all, the story was so compelling that I couldn’t put the book down. It’s definitely a book that makes you stop and think, and I hope that people that read the book will do just that.