Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

          Lauren Oliver's first novel, Before I Fall, tells the story of Samantha Kingston, one of the most popular girls at Thomas Jefferson High School in Ridgeview, Connecticut, and how she dies. Sam and her three best friends, Lindsey, Ally, and Elody all leave a party only to get into a fatal car crash on the car ride home. Sam dies, but wakes up the next morning to realize that she is reliving the same day, February 12. On the first day Sam just thinks that it was all a bad dream and that she is going crazy, but then she  relives the same day another six times, learning something new each time she wakes up to face the same day. The outline of this frightful day begins with the four girls on their way to school and they are all matching because it is Cupid Day at their school and they are all competing with each other to see who can receive the most roses. Sam's day continues as she attends her classes, having a chemistry quiz where she cheats off of a classmate, and then she skips seventh period to go to TCBY with Lindsey. Her day continues as they all go to Ally's house to hang out before Kent's party. Sam is very nervous about hanging out with her boyfriend, Rob, after the party because he believes that he is going to get "lucky".  The whole night Lindsey tries to calm Sam down with alcohol and loud music. When they arrive at the party Rob is completely drunk and Sam regrets her decision to go. When trying to leave the party the girls come across a confrontation with the classic "weird girl", Juliet Sykes, but they soon leave the party after dumping beer onto Juliet's head. Sam, Lindsey, Ally, and Elody all jump into the car and drive off and the last thing Sam can remember is looking at the clock, then Lindsey yelling, and finally the car flips off the road, but then Sam wakes up to relive this day seven more times.
              Lauren Oliver knows her audience very well. This is a perfectly written young adult book, aimed towards teenage girls. Before I Fall  begins as any other young adult book normally would, with a girl and her popular friends living the perfect life, but soon the novel takes a gloomy turn. What I thought  would be a very predictable book soon became filled with mysteries as each day something changed in Samantha's life.  Once I read up to Sam reliving her fourth day, it became a little dull and I did not know if I also wanted to keep reliving the same day. Each day Sam tries correct a mistake or learn a valuable lesson in the end, but it does not matter because she is dead. Sam's life is made up of a perfect boyfriend, sex, drinking, smoking, and partying and it is the typical protagonist of a story and I wonder how the novel would have evolved if the main character was a "normal student" or the girl that Sam and her friends always made fun of. The novel's storyline is not very creative, making me think of the movie "Groundhog Day" where a man, just like Sam has to relive a day in his life. The moral of Sam's tragic death is to treat people with respect and to die with no regrets about the life that she has lived. Each of her last days is altered because of a decision that she has made. One day, Juliet is at the party with Sam, the next bight Sam stays over Ally's house and Juliet commits suicide. I would recommend this book to any teenage girl wanting a book that is easy to read, but also makes the reader think about their own life and the decisions that they have made. My favorite quote from this relaxing read happens to be located on the last page reading, " I'm not scared if that's what you're wondering. The moment of death is full of sound and warmth and light, so much light it fills me, absorbs me: a tunnel of light shooting away, arcing up and up and up, and if singing were a feeling it would be this, this light, this lifting, like laughing...the rest you have to find out for yourself" (Oliver 470).