Author: Alexandra Coutts
Pages:384
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Release Date:September 17th,2013
Source: Received for review Via Netgalley.
Thanks so much for allowing me to review this book!
Summary:
A novel about the end of days full of surprising beginnings
The world is living in the shadow of oncoming disaster. An asteroid is set to strike the earth in just one week’s time; catastrophe is unavoidable. The question isn’t how to save the world—the question is, what to do with the time that's left? Against this stark backdrop, three island teens wrestle with intertwining stories of love, friendship and family—all with the ultimate stakes at hand.
Alexandra Coutts's TUMBLE & FALL is a powerful story of courage, love, and hope at the end of the world.
Tumble and Fall has an amazing cover that intrigued me to no end! At first, I thought this book was a contemporary novel, however, as I read the summary I found it was a mix of sci-fi and contemporary. Which, I thought was also very intriguing and made me want to read it even more out of curiosity. However, as I read on the story just seemed to fall a little short for me.
Tumble and Fall has three different main characters and points of views – Caden, Zan and Sienna. Caden is a nerd at hard, but ever since his dad abandoned his family he has put that aside and became somewhat of a, “party animal.” Zan has lost her high school sweetheart and even though it’s almost been a year she still misses him every day and is still trying to come to terms that he is really gone. Last, but not least, Sienna’s mom died a few years ago and ever since then she has been at The House for mental reasons until the day that her father comes get her to take her home due to the recent news of the impending doom of the world – an asteroid striking earth and knocking it out of its orbit. With only a few days left of their life they all set out on their own separate adventures, some willingly and others not so much, to discover everything they want to know before they die.
I feel as if Tumble and Fall had such a great concept, but didn’t quite reach that concept. I’ve never read a book before were an author attempted to combine sci-fi with contemporary before and I applaud the author for trying. However, I faced some problems throughout reading this book.
The first real big problem I had was that I couldn’t quite connect with every single character. It felt as if I was reading a completely different book when I got to Caden and he just wasn’t as interesting as the other characters in the novel. As the novel progressed I actually skipped his chapter once or twice because the things his father did was just out right outrageous. Buying your son a prostitute is defiantly not the route to go. Okay, so I understand the world is fixing to end, but I felt as if that was kind of thrown into the book at last minute like yeah oh let’s make his dad buy him a prostitute that should make it interesting. Caden was the least relatable character in this novel.
The second problem was that while I connected with the other two characters, sometimes it felt as if there was just not enough going on. I mean let’s be realistic, if an asteroid is going to strike earth, there is going to be complete chaos not this calm community. I just felt as if there was just not enough chaos as I expected there to be.
While I did encounter some problems while reading this book, I do have to give this author some props on the other two characters – Zan and Sienna. I connected to Zan and Sienna so much! In fact, it’s the only thing that made me want to finish the book. While the beginning was quite dull, the romance just progressed throughout the book until the end and I was quite interested in how these romances where going to turn out.
Now on to the end! The ending was a bummer and totally not what I was expecting. At the beginning of this book it felt like a roaring fire because I was so excited to read this novel and as the story progressed the fire just burned out little by little. When it got to the end I was completely disappointed that the book didn’t go out with a BANG like I believe it should have.
In the end, this book will be for someone who loves sci-fi with tons of insta-love and who doesn’t mind reading about three different main characters. This book, while it had its flaws still had a story and I still couldn’t put it down. In the end,although it was a miss for me, I still liked it and you should give it a try for yourself!
