Review: Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Mar 10, 2010 by shanyn

Title: Before I Fall
Author: Lauren Oliver
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication Date: March 2, 2010

What if you had only one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life?

Samantha Kingston has it all—looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend. Friday, February 12th should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it’s her last. The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. In fact, she re-lives the last day of her life seven times, until she realizes that by making even the slightest changes, she may hold more power than she had ever imagined.




I began this book hating the main character, like I usually do when she (or he) is at the top of the school, spitting insults at other students and not caring about anyone besides themselves. That is exactly how Samantha acted, too, along with her other popular friends. It pained me to read about them and the way they were treating their classmates – swearing at them, calling them horrible nicknames (some they had been doing this to for YEARS), and generally not caring about anyone else, at all.

After the big accident happens, we begin the cycles of Samantha reliving her last day. Each day she has some drastic changes and some not so drastic changes – they obviously all affect many aspects of the day. The first few repeats help you to start to understand more about the characters and why things had happened on the original day of the accident.

About four or five times through, Samantha starts to learn about herself, and really think about what she is doing as she repeats. This was my favorite part of the book – many ‘oh-so-popular’ characters have problems actually LEARNING about anything in books that I read… in Before I Fall, I could feel Samantha’s realizations when she learned how her actions were affecting other individuals in her life.

Unfortunately, after Samantha has learned so much about herself, I feel as though some of the other characters remained virtually unchanged. This may not have been an important plot line though – if you consider the book purely as Samantha’s journey, my opinion on this obviously changes quite a bit. But you can’t blame me for wishing more characters could learn compassion.

This is a book that will undoubtedly make you think – it reminded me much of The Butterfly Effect (movie) and Help! I’m Trapped in the First Day of School! (book). The repeating themes from these are obvious, but having experienced them at different stages of my life they have all tied together and influenced my journey with this book.

Beautifully written, Before I Fall forces you to consider your impact and reflect on your life.


Book Cover: 10/10
Book Title: 10/10
Plot: 9/10
Characters: 8/10
Ending: 9/10

Overall: 46/50

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