I finally found my favorite book.
It's so weird that when you hold a book in your hand, before reading it, you're completely oblivious to how it will effect you after reading it.
I've always believed that books don't really change your life, they just open up your eyes on things that are most of the times there but you're blind so you can't see them. Reading changes your point of vue to things. And you're never the same again.
I never thought, two days ago before I start reading this book, that it would contain so much within its pages. It's somehow impossible to believe, but it's there. It happened. And now I can proudly say that "Before I fall" by Lauren Oliver is the best book I've ever read (so far).
It's about a girl, Samantha, who is a senior in highschool. She is popular and she has good friends. She basically doesn't have anything to worry about in life, until she dies and relives her death day over and over again.
When I first started reading it, I thought "I hope it won't be boring". I thought that repeating the same day and talking about the same events in every chapter would drive me crazy at some point. I haven't been more wrong.
When I read Lauren Oliver's book, "Panic", I wasn't impressed by her writing style. She seemed like the kind of authors who would focus on reciting the events and putting the metaphors away. Reading this book felt like I'm reding something that someone completely different wrote. It was a surprise. A good one, though.
The story is captivating, but it's not what I'm really crazy about in this book. It's the fact that Lauren combined so many subjects- friendship, bullying, death, family, decisions, love, regret, sacrifice, bravery, hope, despair.. you name it- in a story that would seem limited to an outsider who haven't read the book yet.
Five out of five stars. Good job, Lauren Oliver.
Spoilers! Read the book then comeback. The post would still be here when you do.
You have been warned.
I mostly loved the pictures she was drawing when she spoke about the dreams Sam had whenever she fell asleep. The darkness, the falling. The fact that Sam wasn't really lost in darkness but she was closing her eyes, and that she wasn't really falling but floating, and that it wasn't as horrible as she thought it would be- it opened up my eyes on the nature of the human being. The way we all see things the way we insist on seeing them. Even if what around us is beautiful, we are stuck fumbling in the darkness, too stupid or too afraid to accept the fact that we might be wrong and that we should let go.
I also like the way Sam was developing over the seven days when she dies, the way she had to deal with the fact that she died every night and woke up alive the next day- but only it wasn't the next day, but the same day over and over again. Denial, fear, rebellion, hope and approval. I love the way she jumps at the end, hoping there will be something more beautiful still unfolded.
I actually smiled as I was reading the last five pages. I was obviously feeling sad that she has to die after all (I was hoping she would eventually wake up in a hospital bed, bruised but alive) but I remembered how she was saying at the begining of the book "You think I deserve that". And I did, I really did at first. And then, Sam shows us that people can change, they can be fixed, and it's beautiful and so full of meaning I almost cried.
When I read a book and begin to get really into it, I am usually dying to see the last line. It was a blur in this book (at least, it was to me) and that would usually bother me. It didn't this time. I think that the mystery enveloping around the story, and the fact of not knowing whether Sam was actually alive again or she's somewhere in between life and afterlife.. it perfects the story.
It is so well written, and it definitely is more than I expected.
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