Review Detail

After really enjoying This Is Not a Test and not really liking Some Girls Are, I started to suspect Courtney Summers was going to be a one hit wonder. Fear not! That is definitely not going to be the case with this author. Fall for Anything, in spite of an unpromising first half, was…beyond words. If a book renders me incoherent, makes my stomach hurt, and has me stuck in that place where I want to see how everything turns out but never want it to end, well, that book is amazing.

Agh, this book made my stomach hurt.

I’m dead right now.

First off, Courtney Summers can write. Really write. I knew this before, obviously, from the two other books of hers that I’d read. But when you couple that supremely powerful command of the English language with a breathtaking punch in the emotional gut, it’s a whole ‘nother ball game. Ms Summers, my hat is off to you. It’s one thing to write poetically, and it’s one thing to write powerfully. This author’s mindblowing manner of combining the two made me weak at the knees.

So let’s see if I can organize myself a little bit here. Uh. Eddie’s dad committed suicide, and she and her mom are really screwed up now. Eddie’s mom’s nasty best friend moves in with them and is nasty. Eddie and her best friend, Milo, are going through a rough patch because she’s a mess and he doesn’t know how to help. Eddie’s dad’s “student” shows up and seduces Eddie with the idea that, through him, she’ll be able to understand her dad and the reasons for his suicide.

The thing with Eddie’s characterization is that you don’t realize how absolutely brilliant Summers was in creating her protagonist until right about the end. Warming up to Eddie is a slow burn. She’s alienated everyone around her, she’s emotionally dead, she’s bitter, she’s potentially suicidal. Not really the kind of girl you want to hang around with, and as far as flawed main characters go, Eddie wins all the awards. I’m going to be honest; I thought Eddie was boring for basically the entire first half of the novel. There was no emotional connection there (which, I realize now, was entirely the point). But then, bing bang boom, seductive student guy shows up and Eddie starts feeling everything, all the time, all at once.

Courtney Summers just turns it ON around page 120. The emotions, when they come, are almost too much to handle. I just sat there, reading Fall for Anything with a stomach ache like: “Words? What are words? I had them but now I don’t. No words.” I walked into this book unprepared, and the twists (there are a couple) compeltely blindsided me. I thought I was going to spend my Friday night reading a realistic fiction, not…THIS.

Like I said, Fall for Anything robbed me of my words. They’re gone, all gone. Courtney Summers punched me in the stomach, hung me out to dry, and then baked me sugar cookies after all the blood rushed to me head and I’d lost my marbles. This book is flawless. This book is everything that keeps my cynical, curmudgeonly self from throwing in the towel and going illiterate. This book killed me.

Ms Summers, I hereby bestow upon thee all of my feelings. Abuse them at will.