Falling Into You

Falling Into You by Jasinda Wilder
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a book that felt like two books; two stories interwoven and loosely connected.

The first story revolves around two high-schoolers, best friends since birth, coming of age and discovering first love. It's a fairytale friendship that grows into a beautiful relationship. And then in a freak accident, the boy is killed.

Insert here the fact that the accident felt conjured up, a dramatic plot device for the sake of drama.

The second story revolves around the surviving girl and the dead boy's brother, their journey to survive the grief and pain caused by the freak accident - and other things. When we meet Nell again, she is two years older, in college and seriously emotionally damaged. Colton, who is the older brother of the dead Kyle, happens to run into her. He is also emotionally damaged, although in a better place than Nell.

Jasinda Wilder has done a couple of things very well in this book. Her characters are well fleshed-out with a fair amount of depth. Their self-destructive actions make sense. Their emotional turmoil is well written; in fact, the whole thing is well-written. Wilder manages to communicate the scope of guilt and loss in a gut-wrenching way that garners our empathy. Her characters are honest and raw. She also proves expert at writing steamy hot passion.

What this book does not have is a believable plot. The story really does require setting reality aside. There are so many problems in Colton's life that are just implausible, as well as Nell's inability to have dealt with her post-trauma emotional incapacities. The NA genre sometimes tries to deal with dark issues like self-mutilation, gangs, pregnancy and death and generally speaking it is done badly. Once in awhile it's done very well, and in this case it was somewhere in the middle. To her credit, Wilder does not attempt to explore many of these issues in depth. Simply touching on them was like adding flourishes to a painting; they enhanced the broader picture of overall grief rather than detracting from it.

The ending was very good. I'm not sure if I liked who the characters were when the story ended, but the ending itself took a step towards believability. It seemed a natural progression. At least it was hopeful.

All in all, it was on the up side of average. Points for seriously steamy scenes and for not trying to reach too far. It's a good balance for the genre.





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