Before I Fall Book Review

There are books that seem to take forever to read, and then there are those that you can't put down. That you lose sleep over.  Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver was one of those books.  I started reading it this morning, and finished before dinner. I LOVED the concept. 

I will start this off by saying I don't like to write reviews of the books I love. I never seem to capture the magic of the novel, and can't get across the beauty of words all the time. 

I will try. 

This book is a cross between Mean Girls and Groundhog's Day (sorry for two film references but I adore both movies!). A girl and her pack of three friends rule the school and are relentlessly nasty to almost everyone.  On their way home from a party, they crash the car and die.  This isn't giving much of the book away because you learn this just by reading the back cover, and yet the main character, Sam, wakes up the next morning - again, on Cupid's Day.  She wakes up six more times to relive the week and hopefully make sense of her life and make a difference.  

Without giving much away, she definitely attempts to seek redemption and the end of the book had me sobbing, just like Fault in Our Stars (a book I read last summer and my family had to give me a pep talk about reading misery books while on vacation). I found myself rooting for her, hoping she would make certain choices, praying she would somehow make it out alive at the end of the week. 

I loved it. I am sad it's over. I wished things could turn out differently in the end, but the book provides hope and if anything - sends across the message that anyone can be fixed. Anyone can make a difference.