Book Review: Falling Into Place
About the Book:
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 narrator, this heart-breaking and nonlinear novel pieces together the short and devastating life of Meridian High’s most popular junior girl. How do we impact one another? How do our actions reverberate? What does it mean to love someone? To be a friend? 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.About the Author:
Amy Zhang is originally from Wisconsin and currently attends college in upstate New York. This is her first book.The Review:
Liz Emerson has
decided to crash her car using Newton’s Laws of Motion. But unfortunately for
her, she doesn’t understand the physics behind it enough to know exactly how to
crash her car in order to die on impact. She had concocted an almost perfect
plan where in her suicide would look like an accident. She had even made three
rules about the day she would end things. However, when the time comes, all of
those three rules are broken.
Liz Emerson was one
of the prettiest, most popular high school students in the school. She had the
world at her fingertips. She was savage and she could tear anyone down. She was
infamous for making plans that solely focused on the destruction of others. By
the time she was a junior in high school, she had left a trail of bodies of
people who used to be in her wake.
Like many other
books, this too was sitting in my Nook Book. When I started reading it last
night I began to realize that our feelings and thoughts and actions are what we
manifest how we become as people. Liz was a deeply unhappy person. She has darkness
inside of her that she had never come to terms with. She has issues that she
has never even tried to get to the bottom of. She had people who cared and she
cared about them too…but just not enough.
That not enough is
what is almost always the tipping point. For people to want to give up because
they think no one would notice if they stopped existing. This is always far
from the truth because there is more to life than just cause and effect! Falling
Into Place is a novel that uses non-linear timeline and an unlikely narrator to
make one understand that our exteriors often don’t mirror what is going on in
our minds.
Amy Zhang’s debut
leaves you with a lot to think about. Especially reflect on the fact that how
we treat others sometimes bounces back to us and we are left grappling and
wondering how on earth we ended up this way! Please do read this book because
it explores quite a bit into the psyche of the human mind. Especially a high
school teenager who seemed to think she did not deserve the world!
Favourite Quote:
I wish second chances were real.
