Interesting plot and good characters. Sad ending so maybe not good for very emotional girls. I really liked it (bit like "God was a rabbit") but it looks like it is for young readers, but I think it really is more for older readers. (I am a 11-year old girl and a fast reader).

I'm your average teenager, with a slight twist - i read more then can be healthy. So this book, whislt it might appear to others to be a sterotypical high school drama, was something quite different. Although the story line was not particularly original, having seen things like this in Groundhog Day and various novels, it was still riveting and well written. The characters were each, individually, loveable and in the day it took me to read it they became real in my mind. One flaw I might mention was the reptition in the structure. Of course this is to be expected when the same day is lived over and over again but I think the author could have changed the events a bit more. I enjoyed this book a lot and would reccommend to any teenager on the basis of it being a thought-provoking and touching read. Thumbs up from me :)

I must say it took me a while to get into this one but once I did I couldn't put it down! 'Before I Fall' is a bit 'Groundhog Day'-esque so prepare for some repetition but stick with it. Sam isn't initially a very likeable character but she definitely grows on you and as the book approaches its ending I was willing the inevitable not to happen. Lauren Oliver is a very talented author and approaches what could be a grim and deep subject with warmth, humour and hope as well as sadness.

Samantha Kingston enjoys her life. Besides school she spends a lot of time with her three girlfriends and likes it to go to parties. After an accident with a car she dies. Everything seems to be over but Samantha gets the chance to relive her last day and she hopes this will offer a possibility to avoid death and correct mistakes she made. I know that everything sounds very unrealistic but I enjoyed reading “Before I Fall”. Lauren Oliver was able to describe Samantha’s behavior in a very precise way. The reader can identify with the young woman. You get the impression that Samantha’s “we do it because nobody is doing it and it most likely will be wrong” is substituted by her attempts to choose the best possible option. At the end of the book you even feel sorry for her. What you should miss is reading the epilogue. It is just one page but shouldn't be skipped.

I try to have a story behind the book and me reading a book and how I came to have the book in my hands. But really this book resonated something in me, seeing the trailer on Netflix before discovering that it was originally a novel. Which certainly intrigued me, I love the idea of time and time loops being used in novels to tell a story which is why I was really intrigued to go out and pick the book up. What I loved about Sam’s story was that every time she woke up to the same day knowing what was to come, it was like the representation of stages of grief. She was grieving for her own life while trying to figure out how exactly her life was meant to end and finally what her life meant to be. Sam goes into her stages of grief with denial and trying to stop her death, anger that she will die and her retaliation to that, depression and finally acceptance that she is going to die. I found that Sam’s cycle of grief was a truthful representation to how people go through the grieving process, except often people don’t grieve for their own death? I think overall I adore Oliver’s writing style, as I’ve never actually read any of her books before but have heard of them. I am eager to read more now because her writing was so vivid when imagining what was occurring in the novel. Really the novel pushes the idea of family importance, friendships and being true to ho you are and not what other people expect you to be and finally love. Being able to love yourself, be happy and comfortable and not to feel pressured in any circumstances.