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A review by haia_929
The Odyssey of Falling by Paige Crutcher
3.0
This is a trimmed down version of my review, to view the full review visit The Book Ramble.
I received a copy of this book from JKSCommunications on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Audrey wants to complete her deceased best friends bucket list as a sort of tribute to her friends live. While she completes the list though she begins to seriously screw up her own life and all of her friendships. The list seems to mostly be about getting noticed, and Audrey certainly gets noticed, but maybe not for the right reasons.
I enjoyed this book. It was a quick and easy read, it was funny, and at some points laugh out loud funny. I found the plot confusing and lacking clear motivation. The characters were fun, at times funny, but also lacked some depth and almost always lacked clear motivation. This one is probably another book were all the pieces are there but they failed to meet the potential they have.
I liked Audrey. I definitely understood the struggles she had regarding university. I think this kind of situation where a parents and child disagree about university choices is one that a lot of people can connect with. I also found that her struggle to continue playing the piano after Meredith's death was part of the grieving process and I thought that was probably one of the better developments in her character. Her motivations to do the bucket list on the other hand were very unclear and poorly developed.
Meredith's friends actions are also similarly unclear. I found the relationship between Penny and Leo uncomfortable and hard to understand. Sage's family story is good, but really disappears into the background after a while. It kind of felt like there were too many friends for any of them to be developed very well.
There are two love interests, Chase and Bandit. Chase is more of a "bad-boy". He is Meredith's ex-boyfriend. He has similar feelings of guilt over Meredith's death which are meant to be his motivation but are also really unclear. Bandit is more of a "bad-boy-that's-really-a-good-boy". He is overprotective of Audrey. I definitely prefered Bandit right off the bat because Chase is so obviously a bad choice. It's really easy to get into the Bandit-Audrey love story which makes the book an easy read.
The plot, as I've mentioned, lacks a lot of clear motivation. I think the thing with all of these lacking points of motivation in the plot and characters is that the motivation is there but it takes sort of a leap to actually see how any of this stuff connects. Doing the bucket list didn't make any sense at all, especially as it was clearly a bad choice, and had clearly messed up Meredith's life already.
Overall I found the book enjoyable. It was well-written in terms of the prose so it was so easy and quick to read. The real problems were in the unclear or lacking motivation which just led to a lot of lost potential. I still enjoyed the book but I'm a little hesitant to recommend it because of the problems. I still think it's worth a shot.
I received a copy of this book from JKSCommunications on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Audrey wants to complete her deceased best friends bucket list as a sort of tribute to her friends live. While she completes the list though she begins to seriously screw up her own life and all of her friendships. The list seems to mostly be about getting noticed, and Audrey certainly gets noticed, but maybe not for the right reasons.
I enjoyed this book. It was a quick and easy read, it was funny, and at some points laugh out loud funny. I found the plot confusing and lacking clear motivation. The characters were fun, at times funny, but also lacked some depth and almost always lacked clear motivation. This one is probably another book were all the pieces are there but they failed to meet the potential they have.
I liked Audrey. I definitely understood the struggles she had regarding university. I think this kind of situation where a parents and child disagree about university choices is one that a lot of people can connect with. I also found that her struggle to continue playing the piano after Meredith's death was part of the grieving process and I thought that was probably one of the better developments in her character. Her motivations to do the bucket list on the other hand were very unclear and poorly developed.
Meredith's friends actions are also similarly unclear. I found the relationship between Penny and Leo uncomfortable and hard to understand. Sage's family story is good, but really disappears into the background after a while. It kind of felt like there were too many friends for any of them to be developed very well.
There are two love interests, Chase and Bandit. Chase is more of a "bad-boy". He is Meredith's ex-boyfriend. He has similar feelings of guilt over Meredith's death which are meant to be his motivation but are also really unclear. Bandit is more of a "bad-boy-that's-really-a-good-boy". He is overprotective of Audrey. I definitely prefered Bandit right off the bat because Chase is so obviously a bad choice. It's really easy to get into the Bandit-Audrey love story which makes the book an easy read.
The plot, as I've mentioned, lacks a lot of clear motivation. I think the thing with all of these lacking points of motivation in the plot and characters is that the motivation is there but it takes sort of a leap to actually see how any of this stuff connects. Doing the bucket list didn't make any sense at all, especially as it was clearly a bad choice, and had clearly messed up Meredith's life already.
Overall I found the book enjoyable. It was well-written in terms of the prose so it was so easy and quick to read. The real problems were in the unclear or lacking motivation which just led to a lot of lost potential. I still enjoyed the book but I'm a little hesitant to recommend it because of the problems. I still think it's worth a shot.