ethrone 's review for:

The Year We Fell Down by Sarina Bowen

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soooo this one is complicated because on one hand i loved the writing, i'm a huge sarina fan and i can't wait to read more of her stuff. on the other hand, the plot was kind of extremely lacking AND there's the whole cheating thing, which by the way, i never would have read this book had i known that there was cheating and i know a lot of other people feel the same SO i'm writing it here and i'm not putting it under spoiler. if you're mad about that, i don't really care because it's a major plot point and it's important to know about.

i won't really get into the cheating other than what i said so read at your own discretion i guess but what i will say about the plot is that there basically wasn't any. i'm usually fine with a bit of slice of life when it comes to my contemporary but there has to be a central plot to keep it going and it kind of wasn't there? i mean one could argue the plot is just corey getting to college and whatnot, but if that's what the plot was supposed to be then it was pretty damn boring.

i can't speak to the representation in this book either. i have seen some people say it was great and others say they didn't like it, so there is that. i will say that there are moments that seem (to me) to be pretty accurate for someone who is experiencing a great loss and who is grappling with that while also trying to live life like everything is fine and i actually really appreciated and related to some of those scenes in this novel.

tbh i don't really want to talk more about this book because the cheating pretty much ruined it for me, so i'll just leave you with what i've already written. i guess if you aren't bothered by cheating, maybe give this one a shot!