Review : The Edge of Falling by Rebecca Serle
Title : The Edge of Falling
Author : Rebecca Serle
Publication Date : March 18th 2014
Publisher : Simon Pulse
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Growing up in privileged, Manhattan social circles, Caggie’s life should be perfect, and it almost was until the day that her younger sister drowned when Caggie was supposed to be watching her. Stricken by grief, Caggie pulls away from her friends and family, only to have everyone misinterpret a crucial moment when she supposedly saves a fellow classmate from suicide. Now she’s famous for something she didn’t do and everyone lauds her as a hero. But inside she still blames herself for the death of her sister and continues to pull away from everything in her life, best friend and perfect boyfriend included.
Then Caggie meets Astor, the new boy at school, about whom rumours are swirling and known facts are few. In Astor she finds someone who just might understand her pain, because he has an inner pain of his own. But the more Caggie pulls away from her former life to be with Astor, the more she realises that his pain might be darker, and deeper, than anything she’s ever felt. His pain might be enough to end his life…and Caggie’s as well.
Personal Thoughts
I always turn to YA contemporaries when I'm going through a book slump and it's a genre that has rarely disappointed me. The Edge of Falling was a book I immediately requested on reading the first few lines of the summary. Books with teenagers learning to overcome grief appeal to me for some reason, but The Edge of Falling turned out to be such a disappointment.
At the start of the book, Caggie is struggling with the grief of having lost her sister. She's no longer the same person that she was and the guilt over her sister's death is clearly eating her on the inside. I wanted to feel for Caggie. I wanted to want to cry with her, but there was a barrier between her character and me preventing me from reaching her emotions. I felt like Caggie's emotions weren't palpable as they should have been, which made it so much harder to identify with her character and in a way, experience her feelings towards everyone around her. When reading books that are rife with sorrow, it's essential for me to understand the mindset of the character so I don't feel like cold and soulless reader, but unfortunately, that is what I felt while reading The Edge of Falling.
Caggie's behavior towards certain obstacles she faces in the book also made me want to rage. This was especially the case when she was with Astor, a guy she meets while out at a bar, who is as troubled as Caggie. It's clear that Astor is hiding dark secrets and she is warned by both her best friend since forever and her older brother about him being sketchy, but she refuses to believe them claiming they don't understand Astor as much as she does. Why would you ever want to believe someone you just met over people you've known for your whole life? And even when she finds proof that he is mentally unstable, she runs back to him as soon as he sweet-talks her and invites him over when she's all alone in her house. I just didn't understand this girl and quite honestly, thought she was idiotic.
Her sweetheart of an ex-boyfriend, Matt, her best friend Claire and her brother, were the only people I cared enough for in the book. They were so supportive of Caggie, but she was in this bubble with Astor and refused to see the love and care she was being showered from the people around her. I also wish we had gotten to know Caggie's relationship with her sister in a more in-depth manner, but we only got a few flashbacks, which I felt didn't add much to the story. The story line with her dead sister and Caggie's attempt at suicide was actually secondary to all the romantic drama in the book, which is probably one of the major reasons this book failed to work for me and didn't impress me as much as I wanted it to.
In the end, my lack of emotional connection with Caggie was what ultimately made me feel rather disconnected from the overall story. The Edge of Falling was unfortunately not the book for me, but if you lovely readers decide to give it a shot, I hope you have better luck with it.
Rating
Cover : 3/5
Plot : 2/5
Characters : 3/5
Writing : 2/5
Thank you to Edelweiss and Simon Pulse for the e-ARC of The Edge of Falling.
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