Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang {guest review}

Falling Into Place
by Amy Zhang
♦publisher: Greenwillow Books
♦release date:September 9, 2014
♦hardcover, 304 pages
♦intended audience: Young adult
♦stand-alone
♦source: from publisher for honest review
♦reviewer: Amy

On the day Liz Emerson tries to die, they had reviewed Newton’s laws of motion in physics class. Then, after school, she put them into practice by running her Mercedes off the road.

Why? Why did Liz Emerson decide that the world would be better off without her? Why did she give up? Vividly told by an unexpected and surprising narrator, this heartbreaking and nonlinear novel pieces together the short and devastating life of Meridian High’s most popular junior girl. Mass, acceleration, momentum, force—Liz didn’t understand it in physics, and even as her Mercedes hurtles toward the tree, she doesn’t understand it now. How do we impact one another? How do our actions reverberate? What does it mean to be a friend? To love someone? To be a daughter? Or a mother? Is life truly more than cause and effect? Amy Zhang’s haunting and universal story will appeal to fans of Lauren Oliver, Gayle Forman, and Jay Asher.

Review: When Liz Emerson crashed her car into a tree, she thought that would be the end. The end of having to look at herself in the mirror, seeing all the damage that she has caused in her life, as well as the lives of those around her. What she didn’t expect, was to live, if you call dangling on the edge living.  As Liz fights for her life, follow the days, hours, minutes and even years, before she crashes her Mercedes. Recounting her life in every last detail …3 years before Liz crashes her car… 8 hours before Liz crashes her car… 17 minutes before … Snapshots of her life’s memories, as well as the events that impacted Liz’s life and those who surround her.

Visions of Liz Emerson’s life: popular, pretty, the homecoming queen, she is everything everyone wants to be. Yet, popularity comes at a cost, a cost Liz is unsure if she is willing to pay. A mean girl to the core and almost naturally cruel, Liz knows that she was responsible for starting the cracks in everyone’s lives, lives that are all now in ruins. If only her classmates knew the real Liz, a girl, tormented with secrets, trying to discover the real place in which she gains her determination to live.

Written in a universal language of love, loss, fear and most of all hope, “Falling into Place,” calls out to be read and understood, highlighting the cause and effect that we have on one another.

Narrated in a unique and surprising voice, I am in awe with the beauty in which Amy Zhang writes. Her honest portrayal of high school and the pitfalls of popularity, exposes the face behind the mask, as well as a side that is rarely seen. Within the chapters of her book, she opens readers to a world of loneliness and loss, with both intensity and realism. Poetic and heartfelt, Amy writes in a fresh new voice that captivates readers, pulling you into a tale that is as fast paced as it is addicting. Forcing readers to explore the world inside Liz Emerson, it leaves your mind to trying to discover why she really crashed her car.

Find Amy Zhang online:  Website  •  Twitter  •  Facebook

Purchase Falling Into Place: BN.com  •  BookDepository  •  Indiebound