book review before i fall

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Before i fall, common sense media reviewers.

From suicide to bullying, every tough teen topic is present.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

Strong storyline about the devastating effects of

By the end of the story Sam acknowledges that she

Suicide by gunshot; suicide attempts by walking in

Sam, the main character, has decided to have sex w

Sam and her friends frequently use mild swear word

Frequent naming of brands: Victoria's Secret,

Sam and her friends drink frequently and take vodk

Positive Messages

Strong storyline about the devastating effects of bullying, how a suicide impacts everyone, that negative social behavior can have far-reaching consequences, and that teens can change the way they treat one another.

Positive Role Models

By the end of the story Sam acknowledges that she wants to be remembered well when she dies and works to correct some her more damaging actions. Whether she changes her actions for altruistic reasons is never fully clear, but she does attempt to change. Her friend Kent is a strongly positive character who supports and accepts her. Most of the adult characters are negative role models, either teachers with bad behavior or parents who neglect or enable their kids to drink.

Violence & Scariness

Suicide by gunshot; suicide attempts by walking into traffic; there is a mild fight between some teen girls at a party.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Sam, the main character, has decided to have sex with her boyfriend of a few months to "get it over with"; some frank discussions with her best friends about what it will be like, if it will be painful, if she should be in love; her friends give her condoms to use for her first time; two of her three best friends are no longer virgins. Sam seduces one of her teachers but stops after kissing and being fondled by him; some kissing between Sam and another boy. Two married teachers are observed making out in a locked room.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sam and her friends frequently use mild swear words including "s--t," "Jesus," "bitch," "pissed," and "hell."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Frequent naming of brands: Victoria's Secret, Steve Madden, iPod, BMS, Body Shop, etc.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Sam and her friends drink frequently and take vodka with them to most events; Sam gets drunk to help her go through with sex for the first time; they attend frequent keggers and it's acknowledged that there is nothing to do at their high school besides drink; her boyfriend gets so drunk he passes out. One girl smokes pot in a school restroom. Sam's best friend Lindsay smokes cigarettes constantly.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that the hook of this popular teen novel is that the main character discovers she's dead after a car accident and that she can relive and study the 24 hours before in detail. Just like the movie Groundhog Day , she indulges in some consequence-free behaviors for the fun of it -- drinking, hooking up with a teacher -- and must go from a very unpleasant person (popular "It" girl everyone secretly hates) to a better person by the end. Teens drink heavily in this novel, the main character contemplates having sex with her boyfriend ("to get it over with") at length, and heavy issues like bullying, suicide, bulimia, anorexia, and abuse are graphically uncovered throughout the story.

Where to Read

Community reviews.

Parents say (14)
Kids say (59)

Based on 14 parent reviews

Deals with important topics, but gets boring

What's the story.

Samantha and her three best friends are the "It" girls at Thomas Jefferson High School. It’s Cupid Day of their senior year, but more importantly, it’s the day Samantha has decided to lose her virginity with her boyfriend, Rob. After a party that night, a fatal car accident interrupts Sam’s plans. It takes a day or two of reliving those same 24 hours before Sam realizes she must be dead, or in limbo of some kind; she notices that she can alter her actions and their repercussions -- but can she save her own life?

Is It Any Good?

Oliver vividly draws a picture of the devastating damage done by bullying, while exploring the ease with which some teens turn a blind eye to such behavior. Watching one's self, or reliving death, is not a new concept in young adult literature, and here the tough issues inherent in the topic are bandied about as often as teens talk keggers and designer duds. But the author does a nice job of exploring the decision to lose one's virginity; and also discovering that all actions have consequences -- although Sam and her friends might be a little old to be making that particular discovery.

The treatment of bullying and its impact, the motivations behind the bullying, and the reasons other kids tacitly accept it is one topic that can't be portrayed too often in books for teens and Oliver gives it a great twist by not trying to make Sam and her friends likable from the start. Her perspective makes the book more realistic and immediate, and makes Sam's ultimate bid for redemption stronger and sadder. The suicide of a classmate is searingly explored and will be the most memorable aspect of the book.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about bullying and the perception that these days, more girls bully than boys. Have you observed that at your school? How is bullying treated by your friends? Have you been bullied?

What advice would you give someone who has been bullied? What do you think your favorite teacher would do if you went to them about being bullied?

Does verbal abuse or taunting do as much damage as physical bullying, or being beat up, would do?

What was the most important thing that Sam learned?

Would you have tried to change something other than Sam if you had the chance to? If you knew it was your last day to live, what would you choose to do?

Book Details

Author : Lauren Oliver
Genre : Contemporary Fiction
Book type : Fiction
Publisher : HarperTeen
Publication date : March 1, 2010
Publisher's recommended age(s) : 14 - 17
Number of pages : 470
Last updated : July 12, 2017

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BEFORE I FALL

by Lauren Oliver ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2010

When your novel’s heroine opens the story as a popular, mean highschooler, the story will be one of two things: a paean to Dolce & Gabbana or a tale of redemption. Sam’s story is of the latter kind: a Groundhog Day –style repeated day she must relive until she gets it right. With each repeat, she changes something in her relationships—to her family, to the cruelty of her queen-bee friends, to her lecherous boyfriend, to the hot math teacher and to the countless nerds, dorks and freaks she’s always abused or ignored. If she can just get it right , Sam thinks, she’ll be freed from her loop and can move on with her life. Within this predictable framework Oliver builds a quietly lyrical story of selfhood and friendship, avoiding the obvious paths out of the time loop. Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day character used his repeated day to learn French; Sam, more valuably, learns that life’s composed of “little gaps and jumps and stutters that can never be reproduced.” Unexpectedly rich. (Fantasy. 12-15)

Pub Date: March 1, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-06-172680-4

Page Count: 480

Publisher: HarperTeen

Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES

Share your opinion of this book

More by Lauren Oliver

THE MAGNIFICENT MONSTERS OF CEDAR STREET

BOOK REVIEW

by Lauren Oliver ; illustrated by Ethan M. Aldridge

by Lauren Oliver

THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY

by Jenny Han ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2009

The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a...

Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.

Belly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date. In the background the two mothers renew their friendship each year, and Lauren, Belly’s mother, provides support for her friend—if not, unfortunately, for the children—in Susannah’s losing battle with breast cancer. Besides the mostly off-stage issue of a parent’s severe illness there’s not much here to challenge most readers—driving, beer-drinking, divorce, a moment of surprise at the mothers smoking medicinal pot together.

Pub Date: May 5, 2009

ISBN: 978-1-4169-6823-8

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES

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Jenny Han Signs Film and TV Deal With Amazon

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WHAT THE MOON SAW

by Laura Resau ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 2006

When Clara Luna, 14, visits rural Mexico for the summer to visit the paternal grandparents she has never met, she cannot know her trip will involve an emotional and spiritual journey into her family’s past and a deep connection to a rich heritage of which she was barely aware. Long estranged from his parents, Clara’s father had entered the U.S. illegally years before, subsequently becoming a successful business owner who never spoke about what he left behind. Clara’s journey into her grandmother’s history (told in alternating chapters with Clara’s own first-person narrative) and her discovery that she, like her grandmother and ancestors, has a gift for healing, awakens her to the simple, mystical joys of a rural lifestyle she comes to love and wholly embrace. Painfully aware of not fitting into suburban teen life in her native Maryland, Clara awakens to feeling alive in Mexico and realizes a sweet first love with Pedro, a charming goat herder. Beautifully written, this is filled with evocative language that is rich in imagery and nuance and speaks to the connections that bind us all. Add a thrilling adventure and all the makings of an entrancing read are here. (glossaries) (Fiction. 12-14)

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2006

ISBN: 0-385-73343-7

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Delacorte

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2006

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FAMILY | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES

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Book Review

Before i fall.

Lauren Oliver
Coming-of-Age

Readability Age Range

Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults, 2011; Capitol Choices Noteworthy Books for Children and Teens, 2011

Year Published

This review was created by the editorial staff at Thriving Family magazine

This coming-of-age book by Lauren Oliver is published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Before I Fall is written for kids ages 14 and up. The age range reflects readability and not necessarily content appropriateness.

Plot Summary

Elementary school. Those were the days when you made dandelion rings for pretend marriage ceremonies, when you smeared cafeteria food all over bullies who made fun of your friends and when you wet your sleeping bag at summer camp but blamed somebody else. Does any of it matter in the end? For Samantha (Sam) Kingston, it does.

Sam is a high school senior. She’s clawed her way up from the bottom rung of the social ladder to become one of the most popular girls at Thomas Jefferson High — thanks in large part to Lindsay Edgecombe, the ringleader of her little circle.

Sam’s life revolves around her friends and her boyfriend, Rob Cokran. At home, she just wants to be left alone. But at school, she is the life of the party. She cheats in chemistry, flirts with her calculus teacher and makes stabbing motions whenever Juliet Sykes walks by — even though she’s not sure why Lindsay hates her so much. She also makes plans to lose her virginity to Rob on the weekend and studiously avoids any semblance of social contact with newspaper geek, Kent McFuller, a boy who was the groom in their pretend wedding in elementary school.

It’s the Friday before Valentine’s Day, better known as Cupid Day at Jefferson High. Students send roses with notes to each other. The more roses you have, the more popular you are. Kent is also hosting a party. He’s bought two kegs of beer, so despite his middling social status, anyone who’s anyone is sure to be there. Already tipsy, Sam and Lindsay show up to the party along with two friends, Elody and Ally. Rob arrives at the party. Unexpectedly, so does Juliet Sykes. Juliet proceeds to tell each member of the foursome exactly what she thinks of them. The girls mock Juliet and pour alcohol on her until she runs away.

Sam’s plans with Rob go awry when he gets drunk and angry. The girls leave the party after midnight in Lindsay’s silver Range Rover. They’ve all had too much to drink, and even sober, Lindsay is a bad driver. Sam really shouldn’t have been surprised when Lindsay suddenly screams and swerves into oncoming traffic and then into the woods, killing Sam instantly. Sam experiences a sensation of falling through darkness, but wakes up the next morning. Only it’s not the next morning — it’s Cupid Day all over again.

On the second day (the first day that repeats itself), Sam is in shock. She does few things differently besides trying to convince herself she has déjà vu and drinking more vodka to make the feeling of inevitability disappear. She dies again in the same car crash that killed her the first time.

On the third day, Sam decides not to do anything that might put her life in jeopardy. She feigns sickness, and her mom drives her to school late. She begs the girls to stay home from the party. They have a drunken (but safe) sleepover at Ally’s house instead. In the middle of the night, Ally’s mom wakes them up. Juliet Sykes shot herself tonight, she says. There was no note. The girls are disturbed but relieved. No note means they won’t be called out for bullying Juliet since middle school. Sam doesn’t die, but still wakes up on Cupid Day the next morning.

By the fourth day, Sam has decided that nothing she does matters. She wears especially provocative clothing and insults her friends so badly that Lindsay kicks her out of her car and makes her walk to school. She seduces a teacher and lies on a desk while he gropes her. Because she has no one to eat lunch with, she smokes pot with a former enemy in the washroom. When the girls arrive at Kent’s house, she pulls an already-drunk Rob into a bedroom with the intention of having sex with him. But before their clothes are completely off, Rob falls into a drunken sleep. Sam leaves him, finds an empty room and cries her heart out. Kent finds her, comforts her and puts her to bed in a friendly, gentlemanly way. Sam begins to fall in love with him.

On the fifth day, Sam makes family her top priority. She tells her friends she’s sick and convinces her mom to let her stay home by saying that she broke up with Rob. She also convinces her mother to let Izzy, Sam’s little sister, stay home with her. Sam and Izzy spend quality time together, and the whole family goes out for dinner at their favorite restaurant. At the restaurant, Sam spots Marian — Juliet Sykes’s younger sister. Sam decides to stop Juliet from committing suicide.

After her family goes to sleep, Sam sneaks out of the house and drives to Juliet’s — but she’s already left for Kent’s party. Desperate to intercept Juliet before she shoots herself, Sam follows her. By the time Sam arrives, Juliet has already insulted Sam’s friends and barricaded herself in a bathroom. Terrified that Juliet may have already killed herself, Sam asks Kent to pick the lock, but Juliet escapes through the window. Sam looks for Juliet in the woods surrounding Kent’s house. She finally finds her standing beside a highway. Sam tries to convince Juliet that it’s not too late, that life is still worth living. But before Sam can stop her, Juliet flings herself in front of an oncoming vehicle — Lindsay’s silver Range Rover. She is killed instantly, as is Sam’s friend Elody.

Sam realizes that Juliet’s suicide caused the crash in the first place. Juliet only shot herself on the one night the girls didn’t attend the party. She needed to confront them so she could work up the courage to end everything. When Sam and her friends weren’t there, it took Juliet longer to decide, and she shot herself instead of throwing herself in front of Lindsay’s car. Kent handles the situation calmly, and once again puts a distressed Sam to bed. He tells her that because she stood up for him in elementary school (smearing hot lunch all over a bully who teased him for crying about his grandfather’s death) he vowed to always be her hero. Sam falls head-over-heels in love with him. She also resolves that tomorrow she will save two lives, hers and Juliet’s.

On the sixth day, Sam is relieved that the day repeats itself. She resolves to do everything perfectly. She is polite to her parents and sister. She stops Lindsay from stealing a parking space from a girl who will be kicked off the swim team if she’s late for school. She removes the mocking note and the rose her friends were going to send to Juliet for Cupid Day and replaces it with two-dozen roses and a note that reads, “From your Secret Admirer.” She doesn’t cheat on her quiz. She scrubs defamatory graffiti from bathroom doors. She orders the roast beef for lunch instead of the more socially correct turkey. At the party that night, she tells Rob to strip naked and wait for her in a bedroom — but instead of coming herself, she sends in an amorous young couple looking for some private space. He is humiliated and flees in his boxers. Sam also intercepts Juliet before she has the chance to confront Lindsay and company. In the privacy of the bathroom, Sam apologizes to Juliet for years of bullying. She also learns why Lindsay hates Juliet — in fifth grade, Lindsay wet the bed on a group camping trip and blamed her best friend at the time, Juliet. Juliet never told anyone, even though Lindsay and her gang of friends (including Sam) made her life a living hell for the next seven years.

But Sam’s apology comes too late, and Juliet slips away. After locking the doors to Lindsay’s Range Rover and taking the keys, Sam goes after her. There’s no way she can jump in front of their car tonight. She finds Juliet by the road again. But when Juliet tries to jump in front of a truck, a surprised Sam barely holds her back. Why isn’t she waiting for Lindsay? Juliet tells her the truth: It’s not about revenge, Sam or Lindsay. She isn’t waiting for the silver Range Rover. Any vehicle will do. She runs into the road just as two minivans converge from opposite directions. She dies.

After dealing with the situation (again), Kent drives Sam home. He kisses her. And Sam wakes up on Friday morning. It’s the seventh time she’ll experience Cupid Day.

Sam tells her parents she loves them. She gives Izzy her grandmother’s necklace and hugs her tightly. She cherishes every moment of silliness with her friends. She tries to do her best on the chemistry quiz, tells her calculus teacher to stop hitting on high school girls, and gives her pot-smoking ex-enemy an art book. She flirts with Kent and breaks up with Rob. She drives her friends to the party and then drives the Range Rover all the way back to Lindsay’s house to make sure none of her friends will drive drunk. Kent drives her back to the party — but not before the two exchange passionate kisses. Sam waits for Juliet at the door, but Juliet runs away. Sam chases after her. Kent and Sam’s friends chase after Sam.

Juliet launches herself into the road as the two minivans converge. Sam runs after Juliet and pushes her to safety. Juliet is still alive, but it’s too late for Sam. She is dying for the last time. But this time, she realizes that she’s flying, not falling. And it isn’t dark at all — her eyes had been closed before.

Christian Beliefs

Years ago when Sam’s family went to church on Christmas and Easter, Sam was afraid of the statue of Jesus on the Cross behind the pulpit. She compares Juliet Sykes to Jesus and to an angel. Professing atheist Lindsay confesses that when she’s afraid she recites the well-known prayer that begins: Now I lay me down to sleep. . . . Later, Sam claims it for herself.

A student asks if souls can go from purgatory to hell. The teacher says no, but adds that some Christians believe souls can move from purgatory to heaven. Sam believes this might happen to her if she sacrifices enough and proves that she deserves to move on.

A Catholic girl plans to save herself for marriage. Lindsay makes the sign of the Cross and pretends to pray for protection whenever Juliet is around. Other mock prayers include asking God to bless a doughnut shop. Kent’s newspaper is called The Tribulation .

Other Belief Systems

Sam speculates that her death may mean that she is forced to live the same day over and over forever. She believes that the moments she lives continue to exist somewhere in the universe, even when the day is over and she does things differently the next day. She experiences a sensation of flying and sees bright colors after her final death.

The girls play with a Ouija board and pretend they have contacted the spirits of child molesters. Sam threatens to convert to voodoo. She speculates that it might be OK to lie if it’s for a good cause. Defecating on a Bible is mentioned.

Authority Roles

Sam’s parents are well-meaning but distant. In their attempt to respect their teenage daughter’s growing need for privacy, independence and personal space, they initially fail to meet her needs for love, discipline and protection.

Sam and her friends find it all too easy to break the rules, and it’s not clear whether the parents condone activities such as underage drinking, teenage sex and other misbehaviors — or whether they simply choose to look the other way. Sam’s relationship with her parents begins to change over the week of Fridays. Sam’s parents object to the clothing she is wearing on the grounds that people will get the wrong idea about her. When Sam tells her mom that she broke up with Rob, her mom enters her room for the first time in years and comforts her. Sam begins to appreciate all the little expressions of love her mother showed her when she was younger and regrets the times when she pushed her parents away.

Lindsay’s parents divorced when she was still in elementary school. Her distress over their separation caused her to start wetting the bed. She has very few rules and boundaries and carefully sneaks out of the house even though she has no curfew.

Teachers are regularly treated with disrespect by Sam and her friends. Teachers also engage in sexual activities with each other and with their students. Elody’s mother is an alcoholic. Kent holds his party when his parents are away.

Profanity & Violence

Profanity is frequent and varied and includes the epithets d–n, p—, s—, b–ch , and a– . The names of God and Jesus are misused. Many other crude words and euphemisms are used.

Juliet commits suicide several times, once with a gun. Sam remembers other students at Jefferson High killing themselves. Girls are hit and killed by vehicles.

Sexual Content

Sam, her friends and seemingly everyone else in their social circle (with the possible exception of Kent) are obsessed with sex. Sam and her friends talk of little else. The author includes sexual banter, gestures, thoughts, fantasies, speculations, rumors and encounters in graphic detail that sometimes border on verbal pornography. Teens (and teachers) grope (over and under clothing), grind, kiss, French kiss, hold hands, make out, hook up, lose their virginity (on purpose and accidentally), have intercourse outside of marriage with various partners, cheat on their significant others, dump their love interest and are dumped by them. Among the more significant incidents are the following:

Sam wants to lose her virginity so Lindsay and Elody will stop teasing her. Sam’s calculus teacher lays on top of her, kissing her and groping. Sam tries to have sex with Rob, but he falls into a drunken sleep before they take their clothes off. Rob regularly massages her breasts under her shirt, often tearing her bra in the process. Sam wears a necklace that reads slut .

Lindsay lost her virginity years earlier to a drunken university student she didn’t even know. The girls call Elody a whore because of the one-sided relationship she shares with her boyfriend, Steve. Sam flashes a car full of strange men. Teenage girls dress provocatively and give sexual favors to uncommitted teenage boys. Girls compare their bodies and accuse each other of having contracted various sexually transmitted diseases. Lindsay calls Kent a stalker. Elementary-age children kiss. Child molestation is mentioned.

A boy calls Kent a faggot in elementary school. Later, that same boy is caught sleeping with another boy. The girls regularly kiss each other on the cheek and feign humping motions as they anticipate or remember male-female unions. Acting too mushy is described as lezzing out . Someone speculates that a girl might be a closet lesbian.

Discussion Topics

Additional comments.

Drug and Alcohol Abuse: Teens (including Sam) regularly abuse alcohol and occasionally drugs. Sam enjoys the feeling she gets when she’s high.

This review is brought to you by Focus on the Family, a donor-based ministry. Book reviews cover the content, themes and world-views of fiction books, not their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. A book’s inclusion does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.

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Book Review: Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver tells the story of Sam Kingston, a pretty and popular senior who has it all. She has three loyal best friends, a great family with a sister who adores her, not to mention her boyfriend is the hottest guy at school. It’s Cupid Day; Sam’s favorite day of the year. Valentines Day is around the corner and Sam is excited to go to school to see how many roses she’ll get this year.

Her day is fairly normal; she goes through the motions of school, cuts class with her best friend Lindsay and later attends a party at a guy named Kent’s house. On the way home from the party, Sam is in a car accident and dies. Only, instead of dying and moving on to another life, Sam goes on to live the day of her death seven times. In each go round, Sam changes her actions desperately trying to figure out why she is stuck in some kind of limbo. Throughout the entire experience, Sam learns what is important, who truly cares about her and what matters most in life.

This review was super difficult to write because this was probably the most powerful book of 2010 (if not one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read). I even tweeted:

In a few reviews I read, some bloggers felt that Sam wasn’t a very likeable character in the beginning and as she began to grow and evolve, they began to like her more. I have to disagree. What I loved most about Sam is that to me, she seemed to be completely normal. Yes, she was in the popular crowd, but it was clear that her best friend was the queen bee, and she seemed to be the mean one. Sam was kind of guilty by association for her actions in my opinion. I thought Sam was completely relatable because, honestly, I think we’ve all been there. We’ve all made fun of someone. We’ve all gossiped behind someone’s back. But deep down, we know that’s not the person we’re supposed to be. We know it’s wrong. We accept that we’ve made bad choices. I think everyone can find a little bit of Sam in themselves. This is one of the reasons I found this book so powerful.

That brings me to the next thing I loved most about this book. It was intensely realistic. I truly believe that this book painted an accurate picture of what it’s like to be in high school today.It’s kind of unfortunate that this is the way things are, especially in the wake of several suicides from bullying, but if Oliver was trying to paint an accurate picture, she succeeded.

The secondary characters in this book play a huge role in the story. Throughout Sam’s seven days left on earth, we get to know the main players in her life pretty intimately. Though I could get behind Sam, even though she was kind of a mean girl, I couldn’t relate to her best friend Lindsay. I’m not sure as readers we were ever really supposed to like Lindsay though. One of my favorite secondary characters was Sam’s little sister. I thought it was really special when they were able to bond and Sam was able to get her closure that her sister would go on to have a good life.

What a beautifully haunting book that really made me stop and think about my actions. The whole time I was reading, I kept thinking about what I would do if I could go back and change the way I treated someone- or made the day a little brighter for someone else. It made me more aware of my current actions and motivated me to live an even better life.

24 thoughts on “Book Review: Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver”

I agree…I liked Sam from the very beginning. She was just such a real girl. (But I always like those flawed narrators)

@Jessica , Agreed. Flawed narrators are just more realistic to me .

I REALLY need to read this book. I can’t believe I have let it sit on my shelf for over a year now!

@Amber , OMG- you own this book and haven’t read it?! Amber, get on this immediately!

Wow – that sounds like quite a book! And I’ve wish-listed it 🙂

@Laura , It certainly is quite a book. Can’t wait to hear your thoughts when you’re done!

Before I Fall was the first really good book I read this year. I can’t wait to get my hands on Delirium. Glad you enjoyed this! =D

@Keri , OMG, Keri…Lauren Oliver is amazing! I just finished DELIRIUM and I didn’t think anything could top BEFORE I FALL, but I think her latest just might.

@Jessica Lawlor , I am epically jealous. Everyone seems to be reading Delirium these days and I have been keen since June. It’s coming out soon at least but I’m not sure it will get here soon…or ever. I’ve never seen Before I Fall in bookstores here, just in the library. I’ll have to order it. Can’t wait!

Wow! I’ve had this one on my wishlist for a while, but sounds like it needs to be bumped up to the top. Books like this — that change our perspective, make us into better people — are often my favorites. Great review, Jess — you succeeded in letting out the “squeeeee!” and making me want to grab it now!

@Meg , Haha, I’m glad this made you squeeee too! Wait until you see my review for DELIRIUM, her second book. It’s coming on Tuesday…I saw you had it on your wishlist and you absolutely have to get your hands on it asap!

Nicely said. I loved this book for all the reasons you mentioned and I think Oliver is extremely talented for being able to write this. (Not to mention Delirium.)

@Annette , Um yes, agreed with your comment on all fronts! Especially in how amazing Oliver is as a writer.

I agree 100%. I love this book and all of it’s amazingness.

@Michelle , Same, same, same! Eeeks, a book hasn’t touched me like this in such a long time!

It sounds like a great read! Thanks for the review…

@Sharon Mayhew , Absolutely! I hope you like it.

Great review! I loved this book as well. It’s defiantly one of my favorite books ever, and even though I hate how it had be sobbing uncontrollably by the end, it goes to show just how great of writer Lauren Oliver is.

@Lauren , Lauren Oliver definitely brings out my emotions in her books- she is such a powerful writer!

This book was total SQUEEEE for me, like you said! I could not put it down. Gah. LOVE.

@Anna , Same, same, same! Have you read DELIRIUM?

totally putting it on my must-read list!

@erin – heart in ireland , Let me know when you read it, Erin!

http://lorxiebookreviews.blogspot.com/2012/05/before-i-fall-by-lauren-oliver.html just finished reading this book, i love your review 🙂

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Before I Fall

Lauren oliver, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Before I Fall: Introduction

Before i fall: plot summary, before i fall: detailed summary & analysis, before i fall: themes, before i fall: quotes, before i fall: characters, before i fall: symbols, before i fall: theme wheel, brief biography of lauren oliver.

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Full Title: Before I Fall
When Written: Late 2000s
Where Written: New York, NY
When Published: March 2nd, 2010
Literary Period: Contemporary
Genre: Young adult fiction; mystery; speculative fiction
Setting: Ridgeview, Connecticut
Climax: Samantha Kingston, having relived the last day of her life for six “days” in a row, trying to save herself with each reset, realizes that in order to close the time loop she has fallen into she must sacrifice herself and die in the place of her often-bullied classmate Juliet Sykes.
Antagonist: Lindsay Edgecombe
Point of View: First-person

Extra Credit for Before I Fall

Big Screen. In 2017, Before I Fall was adapted into a major motion picture, directed by indie darling Ry Russo-Young and starring teen favorites Zoey Deutch as Sam and Halston Sage as Lindsay. Though the film received mixed reviews, it was one of the highest-grossing independent films of the year, and was nominated for several Teen Choice Awards, demonstrating its success with its target audience.

Teen & Young Adult
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Before I Fall Hardcover – March 2, 2010

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Like Adam Silvera's They Both Die at the End and Colleen Hoover's It Ends with Us , Before I Fall raises thought-provoking questions about love, death, and how one person's life can affect so many others. With this stunning debut novel, New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver emerged as one of today's foremost authors of young adult fiction.

For popular high school senior Samantha Kingston, February 12—"Cupid Day"—should be one big party, a day of valentines and roses and the privileges that come with being at the top of the social pyramid. And it is…until she dies in a terrible accident that night.

However, she still wakes up the next morning. In fact, Sam lives the last day of her life seven times, until she realizes that by making even the slightest changes, she may hold more power than she ever imagined.

Before I Fall is now a major motion picture Zoey Deutch, Halston Sage, and Kian Lawley. Named to numerous state reading lists, the novel was also recognized as a Best Book of the Year by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The Daily Beast, NPR, and Publishers Weekly .

Print length 480 pages
Language English
Publisher HarperCollins
Publication date March 2, 2010
Grade level 9 - 12
Reading age 14 - 17 years
Dimensions 5.5 x 1.45 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10 006172680X
ISBN-13 978-0061726804
Lexile measure 860L
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com review, from school library journal.

“Oliver’s debut novel is raw, emotional, and, at times, beautiful....readers will love Samantha best as she hurtles toward an end as brave as it is heartbreaking.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Samantha’s attempts to save her life and right the wrongs she has caused are precisely what will draw readers into this complex story and keep them turning pages until Sam succeeds in living her last day the right way.” — Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) (starred review)

“Oliver, in a pitch-perfect teen voice, explores the power we have to affect the people around us in this intensely believable first novel...This is a compelling book with a powerful message and should not be missed.” — ALA Booklist

“Before I Fall is smart, complex, and heartbreakingly beautiful. Lauren Oliver has written an extraordinary debut novel about what it means to live—and die.” — Carolyn Mackler, author of Tangled and The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, a Printz Honor book

From the Back Cover

What if you only had one day to live?

What would you do? Who would you kiss?

And how far would you go

to save your own life?

Samantha Kingston has it all: looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend. Friday, February 12th, should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it turns out to be her last.

The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. Living the last day of her life seven times during one miraculous week, she will untangle the mystery surrounding her death—and discover the true value of everything she is in danger of losing.

“You’ll have no choice but to tear through this book!” —Jay Asher, author of the New York Times bestseller Thirteen Reasons Why

“Readers will love Samantha best as she hurtles toward an end as brave as it is heartbreaking.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Oliver, in a pitch-perfect teen voice, explores the power we have to affect the people around us in this intensely believable first novel. This is a compelling book with a powerful message and should not be missed.”—ALA Booklist

About the Author

Lauren Oliver is the cofounder of media and content development company Glasstown Entertainment, where she serves as the President of Production.

She is also the New York Times bestselling author of the YA novels Replica , Vanishing Girls , Panic , and the Delirium trilogy: Delirium , Pandemonium , and Requiem , which have been translated into more than thirty languages. The film rights to both Replica and Lauren's bestselling first novel, Before I Fall , were acquired by Awesomeness Films. Before I Fall was adapted into a major motion picture starring Zoey Deutch. It debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017, garnering a wide release from Open Road Films that year.

Oliver is a 2012 E. B. White Read-Aloud Award nominee for her middle-grade novel Liesl & Po , as well as author of the middle-grade fantasy novel The Spindlers and The Curiosity House series, co-written with H.C. Chester. She has written one novel for adults, Rooms.

Oliver co-founded Glasstown Entertainment with poet and author Lexa Hillyer. Since 2010, the company has developed and sold more than fifty-five novels for adults, young adults, and middle-grade readers. Some of its recent titles include the New York Times bestseller Everless , by Sara Holland; the critically acclaimed Bonfire , authored by the actress Krysten Ritter; and The Hunger by Alma Katsu, which received multiple starred reviews and was praised by Stephen King as “disturbing, hard to put down” and “not recommended…after dark.”

Oliver is a narrative consultant for Illumination Entertainment and is writing features and TV shows for a number of production companies and studios.

Oliver received an academic scholarship to the University of Chicago, where she was elected Phi Beta Kappa. She received a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from New York University.

www.laurenoliverbooks.com.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperCollins; 1st edition (March 2, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 480 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 006172680X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0061726804
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 14 - 17 years
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 860L
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 9 - 12
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.19 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.45 x 8.25 inches
#821 in Teen & Young Adult Friendship Fiction
#1,416 in Teen & Young Adult Science Fiction & Dystopian Romance
#2,139 in Teen & Young Adult Contemporary Romance

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Review – Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

By Novelicious

This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.

To kick off our regular YA Wednesday, we are dedicating the whole of today to Lauren Oliver and her fantastic debut book – Before I Fall ! The book is released in March of this year, and is properly amazing.

Here's the review…

Every once in a while you read a book that takes your breath away. You finish the last page and sit staring into space for a few minutes thinking, ‘ Wow’. And then you think about how long an amount of time it would be appropriate to wait before you read it again.

This is what happened between me and Lauren Oliver’s debut novel – Before I Fall.

The book was sent to me for review and, to be honest, I wasn’t that interested. It didn’t really tie-in with what we were already reviewing on Novelicious, plus I had never really read any YA up until that point.

So I had a little leaf through…I didn’t put it down until the next day. Seriously. If you are going to read this novel then don’t plan on getting any sleep, you will NOT be able to put it down.

The concept of Before I Fall has been described as a cross between ‘Groundhog Day’ and ‘Flash-forward’. Sam Kingston dies in a car crash, but wakes up the next morning in her own bed, on the day that she died. She has to live the day that she died over and over again.

This is an excellent premise for keeping the reader hooked. We already know where the character is going to go, what her friends will say, what will happen at lunch – the interesting thing is that we want to know what Sam will change about the day, in order to change the events of her death.

Sam and her friends aren’t, initially, particularly likeable characters, but they are very real. They are cliquey and have flaws. This makes it difficult for the reader to sympathise with what’s happening, which in turn makes the book a whole lot more interesting. It’s not easy to pick a clear cut villain, or hero, but you still care wholeheartedly about what happens to them.

Before I Fall is beautifully written; brave, sincere and very addictive. It captures the essence of high-school brilliantly, and will have you laughing, crying and philosophising.

I wholeheartedly recommend Before I Fall. The best book I’ve read in the last year.

Before I Fall

Buy from other retailers, what's .css-1msjh1x{font-style:italic;} before i fall about.

Like Adam Silvera’s They Both Die at the End and Colleen Hoover’s It Ends with Us, Before I Fall raises thought-provoking questions about love, death, and how one person’s life can affect so many others. With this stunning debut novel, New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver emerged as one of today’s foremost authors of young adult fiction. For popular high school senior Samantha Kingston, February 12–Cupid Day–should be one big party, a day of valentines and roses and the privileges that come with being at the top of the social pyramid. And it is…until she dies in a terrible accident that night.However, she still wakes up the next morning. In fact, Sam lives the last day of her life seven times, until she realizes that by making even the slightest changes, she may hold more power than she ever imagined.Before I Fall is now a major motion picture Zoey Deutch, Halston Sage, and Kian Lawley. Named to numerous state reading lists, the novel was also recognized as a Best Book of the Year by Amazon, Barnes &amp; Noble, The Daily Beast, NPR, and Publishers Weekly.

What Kind of Book is Before I Fall

Primarily about, book lists that include before i fall.

The Creative Behind the Book

Lauren Oliver is the cofounder of media and content development company Glasstown Entertainment, where she serves as the President of Production. She is also the New York Times bestselling author of the YA novels Replica, Vanishing Girls, Panic, and the Delirium trilogy: Delirium, Pandemonium, and Requiem, which have been translated into more than thirty languages. The film rights to both Replica and Lauren’s bestselling first novel, Before I Fall, were acquired by Awesomeness Films. Before I Fall was adapted into a major motion picture starring Zoey Deutch. It debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017, garnering a wide release from Open Road Films that year.Oliver is a 2012 E. B. White Read-Aloud Award nominee for her middle-grade novel Liesl &amp;amp; Po, as well as author of the middle-grade fantasy novel The Spindlers and The Curiosity House series, co-written with H.C. Chester. She has written one novel for adults, Rooms.Oliver co-founded Glasstown Entertainment with poet and author Lexa Hillyer. Since 2010, the company has developed and sold more than fifty-five novels for adults, young adults, and middle-grade readers. Some of its recent titles include the New York Times bestseller Everless, by Sara Holland; the critically acclaimed Bonfire, authored by the actress Krysten Ritter; and The Hunger by Alma Katsu, which received multiple starred reviews and was praised by Stephen King as “disturbing, hard to put down” and “not recommended…after dark.” Oliver is a narrative consultant for Illumination Entertainment and is writing features and TV shows for a number of production companies and studios.Oliver received an academic scholarship to the University of Chicago, where she was elected Phi Beta Kappa. She received a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from New York University.www.laurenoliverbooks.com.

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Before I Fall: From the bestselling author of Panic, soon to be a major Amazon Prime series

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Before I Fall: From the bestselling author of Panic, soon to be a major Amazon Prime series Paperback – 22 July 2010

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Before I Fall: The official film tie-in that will take your breath away

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A bestselling summer read as heartbreaking as The Lovely Bones and as gripping as Jenny Downham's Before I Die . ** Now a major Netflix movie starring Zoey Deutch, Halston Sage, Logan Miller, Kian Lawley * ' Gossip Girl meets Groundhog Day' Grazia 'Tender, funny and raw' Marie Claire 'A clever, funny, insightful and utterly addictive novel' Daily Mail ' Compelling and poignant, a truly memorable read' Closer They say 'live every day as if it's your last' - but you never actually think it's going to be. At least I didn't. The thing is, you don't get to know when it happens. You don't remember to tell your family that you love them or - in my case - remember to say goodbye to them at all. But what if, like me, you could live your last day over and over again? Could you make it perfect? If your whole life flashed before your eyes, would you have no regrets? Or are there some things you'd want to change...? 'This book will take your breath away' She 'A beautifully written and outrageously weepy tale' Daily Mirror

Print length 368 pages
Language English
Publisher Hodderscape
Publication date 22 July 2010
Dimensions 13.7 x 2.4 x 19.7 cm
ISBN-10 9780340980903
ISBN-13 978-0340980903
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Lauren Oliver is the author of YA novels Ringer , Replica , Before I Fall , Panic , Vanishing Girls and the Delirium trilogy: Delirium , Pandemonium and Requiem , which have been translated into more than thirty languages and are New York Times and international bestsellers. She is also the author of two standalone novels for middle-grade readers, The Spindlers and Liesl & Po , which was an E. B. White Read Aloud Award nominee; the Curiosity House series; and a novel for adults, Rooms . A graduate of the University of Chicago and NYU's MFA program, Lauren Oliver is also the co-founder of the boutique literary development company Glasstown Entertainment. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Find more information at www.laurenoliverbooks.com, or connect with Lauren on Twitter (/OliverBooks) and on Facebook (/laurenoliverbooks).

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0340980907
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hodderscape; 1st edition (22 July 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780340980903
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0340980903
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.7 x 2.4 x 19.7 cm
49 in Young Adult Nonfiction on Bullying
126 in Time Travel Sci-Fi Books for Young Adults
156 in Books on Being a Teen for Young Adults

About the author

Lauren oliver.

Lauren Oliver divides her time between New York, LA, Connecticut, and a variety of airport lounges. You can visit her online at www.laurenoliverbooks.com.

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What if you had only one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life?

"I've started dreaming of Portland again.

Samantha Kingston has it all: the world's most crush-worthy boyfriend, three amazing best friends, and first pick of everything at Thomas Jefferson High—from the best table in the cafeteria to the choicest parking spot. Friday, February 12, should be just another day in her charmed life.

Instead, it turns out to be her last.

Then she gets a second chance. Seven chances, in fact. Reliving her last day during one miraculous week, she will untangle the mystery surrounding her death—and discover the true value of everything she is in danger of losing.

~Jay Asher, author of the New York Times bestseller Thirteen Reasons Why

"Oliver's debut novel is raw, emotional, and, at times, beautiful .... Readers will love Samantha ... as she hurtles toward an end as brave as it is heartbreaking."

~Publishers Weekly, starred review

"An evocative look at life and death. Samantha's attempts to save her life and right the wrongs she has caused are precisely what will draw readers into this complex story and keep them turning pages until Sam succeeds in living her last day the right way."

~VOYA, starred review

BEFORE I FALL by Lauren Oliver | Foreign Sales

Brazil: Intrínseca; Britain: Hodder Stoughton; Bulgaria: Enthusiast; Catalonia: Editorial Cruilla; China: Beijing Booky; Czech Republic: Albatros; Denmark: Carlsen; Finland: WSOY; France: Hachette Jeunesse; Germany: Carlsen; Greece: Psichogios; Holland: House of Books; Hungary: Cicero Publisher; Israel: Kinneret; Italy: Piemme; Korea: Bookfolio; Latvia: Zvaigzne ABC; Lithuania: AlmaLitterera; Mexico: SM Mexico; Norway: Gyldendal; Poland: Otwarte; Portugal: Presenca; Romania: Litera International; Russia: Exmo; Slovakia: Enigma; Spain: Ediciones SM; Sweden: Bonnier Carlsen; Taiwan: Sharp Point; Turkey: Artemis Yayinlari; Vietnam: Innovative Publishing & Media Corp

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#1 Spring Indie Children’s Pick
B&N Teen Book Club Pick
Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Books of the Year
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Amazon Top 100 Editors’ Picks of the Year
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Barnes and Noble Best Teen Books of the Year
NPR Best Books of the Year— The Year’s Best Teen Reads
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Indie YA Book of the Year shortlist
Amazon Ten Best Teen Books Ever (customer-selected)
Romantic Times Best Mainstream and Young Adult Novels
Capitol Choices “Noteworthy Titles for Children and Teens”

Book Review: Before I Fall

Have you ever made a mistake one day that haunts you when you go to bed that night? You think to yourself, “Why would I say that” or “I should’ve chosen to go somewhere else” or even “That wasn’t the right decision and I knew that.”

The thought of a decision you made aches in the back of your head, unable to shut off the persistent and lingering judgment you’re giving to yourself. Or maybe you didn’t even realize the impact of what you had done or said to outside parties.

Déja vu is defined as a feeling of having already experienced the present situation. It is the internal motion that one has lived through the specific situation and has “already seen” what is currently occurring. Popular high school senior Samantha Kingston knows this surreal experience all too well in Lauren Oliver’s young adult novel, Before I Fall.

Feb. 12, “Cupid Day,” was supposed to be a day of partying, roses and privilege for the ranking queen of the social pyramid, Samantha. However, that is until she dies that very night in a devastating accident. Darkness. Until the sound of the rhythmic alarm tone is heard in the background. She wakes up the next morning. And it’s Cupid Day. Again.

It continues to be this same day seven times over again, forcing Kingston to relive her last day until she realizes the faults she’s putting out into the world around her, the worth she didn’t know she embodied and the wrongs that she has the potential to make right, at her very fingertips.

Oliver did an amazing job contrasting between Kingston’s morals and the choices she makes. As the reader, you will begin to make your own assumptions about her character, but you will soon feel extremely conflicted. Through her wrongs, the feeling of empathy you instill upon her is impossible to ignore. Every morning she opens her eyes is a new chapter to understand who Kingston is and why she does what she does.

As a young adult, you already know how difficult it can be to find your true self. Attempting to navigate through your peers, not wanting to be the “odd man out” on decisions you may instinctively know are wrong. For most of Kingston’s life, she’s been the girl to light up the room she walks into. The “queen-bee” of the hallways in school. She’s been the girl shadowing the attitudes and bullying of her friend group.

Oliver centers her novel around just one question: If you had just one day to do over and make better choices, would you? Would you let go of the immature and disrespectful boyfriend you’ve latched on too for sake of popularity, and instead acknowledge and show interest in the nice guy who you’ve written off for so long?

Would you treat the quiet, timid girl sitting in the back of art class a little nicer? Maybe ask her how her day was, or what her favorite season is. Would you really see the beauty of life for what it really is? Would you appreciate your little sister who draws you pictures every morning and not treat your mom like she’s beneath you? These are all questions and actions Oliver raises in Kingston’s last day on Earth.

It’s truly breathtaking the way Oliver relives the same day seven times without an ounce of the story becoming redundant to the reader. Each day spent and each lesson learned is engaging and insightful to say the least.

Before I Fall isn’t just a story. It is 480 pages of thought-provoking observation and examination. It acknowledges the significant, life-altering consequences of miniscule actions, built up. Will Kingston get a second chance at life? Will she realize her wrongs, or continue down the same ugly path? Or is it all too late to reverse? I can assure you, you will not be expecting the ending until the very last chapter.

Before I Fall is now a major motion picture starring Zoey Deutch. The novel, named to numerous state reading lists, was recognized as Best Book of the Year by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The Daily Beast, National Public Radio (NPR), and Publishers Weekly.

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, before i fall.

Prologue

They say that just before you die your whole life flashes before your eyes, but that's not how it happened for me.

To be honest, I'd always thought the whole final-moment, mental life-scan-thing sounded pretty awful. Some things are better left buried and forgotten, as my mom would say. I'd be happy to forget all of fifth grade, for example (the glasses-and-pink-braces period), and does anybody want to relive the first day of middle school? Add in all of the boring family vacations, pointless algebra classes, period cramps and bad kisses I barely lived through the first time around...

The truth is, though, I wouldn't have minded reliving my greatest hits: when Rob Cokran and I first hooked up in the middle of the dance floor at homecoming, so everyone saw and knew we were together; when Lindsay, Elody, Ally and I got drunk and tried to make snow angels in May, leaving person-sized imprints in Ally's lawn; my sweet sixteenth party, when we set out a hundred tea lights and we all danced on the table in the backyard; the time Lindsay and I pranked Clara Seuse on Halloween, got chased down by the cops, and laughed so hard we almost threw up. The things I wanted to remember; the things I wanted to be remembered for.

But before I died I didn't think of Rob, or any other guy. I didn't think of all the outrageous things I'd done with my friends. I didn't even think of my family, or the way the morning light turns the walls in my bedroom the color of cream, or the way the azaleas outside of my window smell in July, a mixture of honey and cinnamon.

Instead, I thought of Vicky Hallinan.

Specifically, I thought of the time in 4th grade when Lindsay announced in front of the whole gym class that she wouldn't have Vicky on her dodgeball team. "She's too fat," Lindsay blurted out. "You could hit her with your eyes closed." I wasn't friends with Lindsay yet, but even then she had this way of saying things that made them hilarious, and I laughed along with everyone else while Vicky's face turned as purple as the wrinkled underside of a storm cloud. That's what I remembered in that before-death instant, when I was supposed to be having some big revelation about my past: the smell of varnish and the squeak of our sneakers on the polished floor; the tightness of my polyester shorts; the laughter echoing around the big empty space like there were way more than twenty-five people in the gym.

And Vicky's face.

The weird thing is that I hadn't thought about that in forever. It was one of those memories I didn't even know I remembered, if you know what I mean. It's not like Vicky was traumatized or anything. That's just the kind of thing that kids do to each other. It's no big deal. There's always going to be a person laughing and somebody getting laughed at. It happens every day, in every school, in every town in America--probably the world, for all I know. The whole point of growing up is learning to stay on the laughing side.

Vicky wasn't very fat to begin with--just some baby weight on her face and stomach--and before high school she'd lost that and grown three inches. She even became friends with Lindsay. They played field hockey together and said hi in the halls. One time Vicky brought it up at a party our freshman year--we were all pretty tipsy--and we laughed and laughed, Vicky most of all, until her face turned almost as purple as it had all those years ago in the gym. That was weird thing number one. Even weirder than that was the fact that we'd all just been talking about it--how it would be just before you died, I mean. I don't remember exactly how it came up except that Elody was complaining that I always get shotgun and refusing to wear her seatbelt and kept leaning forward into the front seat to scroll through Lindsay's iPod, even though I was supposed to have deejay privileges. I was trying to explain my "greatest hits" theory of death and we were all picking out what those would be. Lindsay picked finding out that she got into Princeton, obviously, and Ally--who was complaining of the cold, as usual, and threatening to drop dead right there of pneumonia--participated long enough to say she wished she could relive her first hook-up with Matt Wilde forever, which surprised no one. Lindsay and Elody were smoking, and freezing rain was coming in through the cracked windows. The road was narrow and winding, and on either side of us the dark stripped branches of trees lashed back and forth, like the wind had set them dancing.

Elody put on "With or Without You" to piss Ally off, maybe because she was sick of her whining. It was Ally's song with Matt, who had dumped her in September. Ally called her a bitch and unbuckled her seatbelt, leaning forward and trying to grab the iPod. Lindsay complained that someone was elbowing her in the neck. The cigarette dropped from her mouth and landed between her thighs. She started cursing and trying to brush the embers out from the seat cushion and Elody and Ally were still fighting and I was trying to talk over them, reminding them all of the time we'd made snow angels in May. The tires skidded a little on the wet road and the car was full of cigarette smoke, little wisps rising like phantoms in the air.Then all of a sudden there was a flash of white in front of the car. Lindsay yelled something--words I couldn't make out, something like Sit, or Shit, or Sight--and suddenly the car was flipping off of the road and into the black mouth of the woods. I heard a horrible, screeching sound--metal on metal, glass shattering, a car folding in two--and smelled fire. I had time to wonder whether Lindsay had put her cigarette out.

Then Vicky Hallinan's face came rising out of the past. I heard laughter echoing and rolling all around me, swelling into a scream.

Then nothing.

Before I Fall by by Lauren Oliver

Genres: Fiction , Young Adult 12+
hardcover: 480 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN-10: 006172680X
ISBN-13: 9780061726804
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Add your guide, you are here:, before i fall.

Samantha Kingston doesn't have the weightiest of matters on her mind the morning of Friday, February 12th, the day she dies. It's the typical concerns of a popular high school senior that preoccupy her: How many roses will she receive today during the popularity contest Cupid Day? Will she and longtime crush (and now boyfriend) Rob actually do the deed tonight as she has promised?

Sam rides to school, discussing these topics with pals Lindsey, Elody and Ally. Lindsey, the leader of the group, is driving erratically and making Sam nervous as usual. Wisecracking Elody is doing what she does best: making everyone laugh with her witty banter. Sam is quite the witty narrator herself. When musing idly on her group's status, she says this about popularity in general: "…you know it when you see it. Like a lazy eye, or porn."

At school Sam begins collecting her roses from the expected Valogram givers, such as Rob and her friends. She also receives one from quirky cartoon artist Kent McFuller, who was once Sam's best friend but whose unique style of dress (including daily blazer and bowler hat combos) and other lone wolf freaky ways mean their paths have long diverged. Sam's day otherwise follows her usual patterns: she cheats from dorky Lauren in chem class, flirts with adorable young teacher Mr. Daimler in trig, and joins her friends in tormenting the classmate they've nicknamed "Psycho."

Sam also ponders the disturbing fact that she often has to tell herself she should be happy to be half of a couple with Rob, while Kent McFreaky seems to have some strange power to disturb her. Kent invites her to a party at his home. Normally she wouldn't consider attending, but her friends decide to go since Kent has promised a keg and a parentless house.

Sam and her group start drinking vodka while they get ready for the party. Although drunk by the time she arrives at Kent's house, Sam can't blame the surreal and dramatic scene that follows on alcohol. She hates to admit it to herself, but she fears that what Kent tells her about herself may actually be correct. And then, Sam's death ends everything for her…

…until the next morning when she awakens to find that it is Friday, February 12th, and Cupid Day all over again. Naturally enough, her first inclination is to believe she has gone insane, but as she relives that day again and again, Sam begins to change in both subtle and enormous ways. She becomes convinced that somehow in some way she can change events during the day so she won't continue to cycle through February 12th forever and ever. Could it be that her purpose is to stop one ugly incident followed by a tragedy in order to fix whatever has gone so weirdly wrong in her world? As Sam grapples with this notion, she wonders what is inevitable in life and what can be changed. How much in her life is she truly responsible for?

Although BEFORE I FALL is getting an incredible amount of attention, the book far surpassed my expectations. I must admit that I was a bit put off at the very beginning by Sam and her friends, who appeared to be the typical popular, beautiful mean girls --- shallow characters who have been featured in way too many books, in my opinion. I was thrilled to be proven wrong quickly. Sam turns out to be a deep thinker as she uncovers layers during her sojourn through seven incarnations of the day of her death, growing and changing with each cycle. She slowly arrives at enlightenment about her family, friends, classmates, teachers and herself. During this process, she gains a new perspective on life itself --- one that may deeply affect how readers view their own lives (I suspect this is part of what has powered the buzz around this book, along with the fact that it's a gripping page-turner).

Words are inadequate to describe how much I admire the inventive and intriguing concept and the brilliant execution of Sam's story, with its brave and perfect conclusion. BEFORE I FALL is a must read.

Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon on March 2, 2010

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Publication Date: March 2, 2010
Genres: Fiction , Young Adult 12+
Hardcover: 480 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN-10: 006172680X
ISBN-13: 9780061726804

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Navalny to Take One Last Shot at Putin From Beyond the Grave

His widow characterized the book he finished in jail before his death as one last act of defiance. It will be published in the fall.

Dan Ladden-Hall

News Correspondent

A memoir written by the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in the final years of his life will be published in the fall, according to a report.

The work titled Patriot will be published by Knopf in the U.S. on Oct. 22, with a representative for the publishing house confirming to The New York Times that a Russian-language version of the book will also be available. Navalny’s widow said the book serves as one last act of defiance following her husband’s death in an Arctic penal colony in February.

“This book is a testament not only to Aleksei’s life, but to his unwavering commitment to the fight against dictatorship—a fight he gave everything for, including his life,” Yulia Navalnaya said.

“Through its pages, readers will come to know the man I loved deeply—a man of profound integrity and unyielding courage. Sharing his story will not only honor his memory but also inspire others to stand up for what is right and to never lose sight of the values that truly matter.”

Navalny started working on the memoir in 2020 as he recovered from an assassination attempt using the nerve agent Novichok. But he also continued working on the book after his arrest in 2021 and subsequent imprisonment. The finished work will include previously unseen prison correspondence, the publisher told the Times .

The cause of Navalny’s death at the age of 47 remains officially unexplained, though his allies say that his mother was shown a death certificate which claimed he died of “natural causes.”

Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, announced Wednesday that Russian authorities have extended until April 20 the deadline for a preliminary probe into Navalny’s death.

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here .

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Review: Book on Rural ‘Rage’ Is a Grindstone in Search of an Ax

I n White Rural Rage the Threat to American Democracy , Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman carry a grindstone in search of an ax. They just don’t like rural America. They contend that white rural America has too much power, that it is too highly regarded, and that the anger of white rural citizens is spilling over in a way that is driving the country to the brink.

Citing a patchwork of public polls, the authors make a case that in rural America there is distrust of government, fear of socialism, and that rural residents, when compared to city and suburban dwellers, polled as more prejudiced against people of color, LGBTQ community, and political progressives. The authors repeatedly point out rural violence, addiction, poverty, illness, and hypocrisy. Schaller and Waldman also write that rural voters have moved boldly to the GOP since 2000, becoming a significant part of Donald Trump’s voter base, and that Trump himself represents existential peril to America continuing as a democratic republic.

They do not talk about national Democratic Party decisions in 2000 and 2004 to move resources away from the rural battleground and to metropolitan strongholds, opting for base strategies over outreach. Or how Obama reversed that strategy in 2008, when rural voters came back. They do not mention that Trump actually won the suburban vote in 2016, and that the suburbs are where 60% of Americans live. And though it might just be me, they seem to show some smug satisfaction that the suicide rates and covid deaths were measurably higher in rural America.

They keep using straw men to debunk the idea of a “rural ethos,” and they use irony to smirk at rural as the “essential minority,” a term I hadn’t heard in my career in rural work. They are convinced that rural America is extolled in the media and throughout U.S. intelligentsia. They even believe commercial media caters to the shrinking pool of rural consumers in programs driven by advertising revenues. It might be a lot easier to believe that the results are rigged in favor of rural places if you live where the downtowns are not shuttered and the teachers aren’t using their own money to send home peanut butter sandwiches to kids living without.

Schaller and Waldman make a central argument that white rural communities have an oversized political reach, and in large part that’s due to the design of the U.S. Senate, and because of gerrymandering in the U.S. House of Representatives. They contend that the Senate now skews Republican because of self-sorting migration to higher population states, and that in turn gives small states too much clout. Here the authors seem to have a beef with the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the Connecticut Compromise that broke the impasse threatening to kill the United States before it started.

Commentary – New Book on Rural America Started with a False Conclusion, Then Looked for Evidence

I was surprised to see myself quoted in the book from an interview in Politico in 2016 talking about political speech and intonation. In White Rural Rage I seem to be giving an excuse for rural people to vote for Trump and against Clinton. But I did vote for Hillary. I share the authors’ misgivings about Donald Trump, though I am less in the camp that says he’s Pol Pot and more settled into the belief that he is a sneak thief. If someone like Trump lived in my hometown, I am pretty sure no one would sell him a dinette set on credit. And if he was your next-door neighbor, you’d make sure the tool shed was locked at night or you’d see your shop vac in his yard sale on Saturday. But I digress.

I understand the authors’ challenges in sorting what is rural and what is not. But they spend a good deal of time obscuring who is which. For example, they detail the early antipathy to Obamacare, the outright racism characterizing the public debate, and states’ resistance to expanding Medicare as part of adoption. They lay out that intransigence sometimes as rural, other times as general opposition. But then the authors say that rural states made a show by rejecting Obamacare even though their residents were less healthy, under-insured, and needed the coverage most. What Schaller and Waldman do not point out is that of the 10 most rural states, only Mississippi and Alabama have rejected expanding Medicare. Nor do they mention that Texas which is 83% metropolitan, and Florida, which is 91% metropolitan, both rejected Obamacare.

Commentary: Lack of Political Competition Harms Rural Americans

There are other small examples that are hard to swallow. They talk about the failed attempt to kidnap and kill Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer as a rural terrorism plot. But their focus is on two ringleaders, one born in a small town who’d moved to Grand Rapids, and another living in the largest county in Delaware just outside Wilmington. Two would-be terrorists living in major metropolitan urban areas with over a million residents each, yet the rage narrative is about rural insurrection.

It is probably not that big a deal in the long run to print this detail wrong here or to conflate suburban and rural there. Politico , The Atlantic , and the Democratic Strategist have weighed in on the misleading way the data is meted out in White Rural Rage . I am reminded of the line in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy : “Barrabas was a bookseller.” And I completely agree that no one is served by painting a romanticized view of rural life. We have lost a lot. Wealth, agency, trajectory. And there is way too much meanness and bigotry going around. But I also think of the Reverend Everett Parker, who successfully challenged the broadcasting license of WLBT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi. The station was a beacon for segregation in the 1960s and used its nightly news cast to showcase images of African-Americans accused of crimes. It wasn’t that African-Americans never committed crimes in Mississippi, rather it was that the station used its platform and agency to skew the public’s understanding of criminality and of danger. It seems Schaller and Waldman are also using their platform and agency to reframe the American political struggle to make rural people the chief threat because they changed from voting for Democrats to voting for Trump. The authors are pointing at what they see as a series of flaws in the character of white rural Americans, not at a political calculation.

My rural Appalachian county is in the corner of Kentucky, one county over from Mingo County, West Virginia, where the authors spend time interviewing locals about a sudden rightward political shift. My county is majority Democrat and voted 4-1 for Trump. Even closer to me than West Virginia is Wise County, Virginia. I can see it from my back door. Wise, like Mingo, has flipped big for Trump. Virginia is a blue state however, and even though Virginians cast more Trump votes than Kentucky or West Virginia, they don’t seem to threaten American Democracy in the same way. Similarly there were more Trump voters in California than in Texas, but the threat of MAGA California seems more a curiosity than a threat to the union. We often fret over the health of the democracy as part of talking about the next election cycle and our candidate’s prospects. The campaigns always say the stakes have never been higher, with little regard for how so much breathless rhetoric itself drives division and deadens common purpose.

Commentary: Carl Albert Didn’t Fall for the ‘White, Rural Rage’ Stereotype. We Shouldn’t Either.

When I lived in the city I saw some pretty frightening racist behavior. And here in the countryside, I’ve witnessed some extraordinary selflessness that crossed color lines to help folks in trouble. I would never pretend either of those was a rule, and I do not have a set of online polls to give me clarity. I have, however, commissioned enough polls to get a sense of what surveys can teach us and what they can’t.

A different perspective is that it was a mere 2,000 people who rushed into the Capitol on January 6, 2020, and nearly stopped the transfer of power. Those relatively few Capitol insurrectionists were disproportionately metropolitan , not rural, but who’s from what Zip code is not what’s alarming. The scary part is the fragility of the American system and our weakened capacity to maintain consent of the governed. Everybody is aggravated. And there is plenty enough resentment out there to mess it all up both in the city and in the town. As former Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn said, “It takes a special kind of man to build a barn, but any jackass with a box of matches can burn one down.” If we let ourselves think those jackasses are confined to rural America, the barn is in great peril.

Dee Davis is publisher of the Daily Yonder and president of the Center for Rural Strategies.

The post Review: Book on Rural ‘Rage’ Is a Grindstone in Search of an Ax appeared first on The Daily Yonder .

In White Rural Rage the Threat to American Democracy, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman carry a grindstone in search of an ax. They just don’t like rural America. They contend that white rural America has too much power, that it is too highly regarded, and that the anger of white rural citizens is spilling over […]

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Before Dawn review – Anzac drama needed a bigger budget or a better script

A central performance from Levi Miller isn’t enough to lift a run-of-the-mill war film that struggles to maintain dramatic interest

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W atching Before Dawn, it is quickly obvious that this first world war drama didn’t have a budget big enough to stage blockbuster scale battlefield recreations – instead, there’s plenty of scenes following characters inside trenches, the camera poised below ground level. Director Jordan Prince-Wright exploits the restricted spatiality of these settings, often keeping shots tight and human-oriented, with scant locational details. The cover of night also helps. It reportedly cost $900,000 in earthworks to dig the trenches, transforming farmland in Esperance, Western Australia, into environments that can plausibly – at a push – resemble terrain in war-torn Europe.

The marketing materials for Before Dawn do a good job impersonating a bells-and-whistles production but the film itself is another matter: there were times, particularly early on, when I couldn’t help but think, “These are just actors performing in a hole in the ground.” You can feel Prince-Wright and his cast and crew bending over backwards to achieve things better resourced productions pull off much more easily, giving the experience a slight tang of desperation, and perhaps diverting attention from areas where it needed work – such as the script, which brings nothing really new to the table and lacks a compelling arc.

The film follows Levi Miller’s Jim Collins, a virtuous young man who leaves the family sheep station to serve in the war, deployed with fellow Anzacs to the western front. Before Dawn begins with battlefield imagery – rats skulking around, soldiers navigating muddy trenches – before jumping back to Jim at home. The film feels quite unsettled in its establishing minutes, before stabilising into an experience that deploys the sorts of scenes and messages we’ve seen many times before, often in far superior productions. Soldiers push through perilous terrain, share moments of bonding, encounter death and horrible hardship, deliver melancholic reflections accompanied by an orchestral score, et cetera.

Miller is a bankable actor (he is particularly impressive in the 2021 swimming drama Streamline ) but his performance here, like the film itself, lacks gravitas. He isn’t enough to lift a run-of-the-mill production that struggles to maintain dramatic interest. It is reasonably successful in some aspects, though – for instance, in its portrayal of camaraderie between very young men in tragic circumstances.

The producers have declined to say how much the film cost to make, but it doesn’t look like a lot. Budgets are never an indication of quality – in fact, big ones come with all sorts of consequences, alluded to in Orson Welles’ great quote: “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” But money and resources can be particularly important in genres such as science fiction, period dramas and war films, especially if they’re based in environments with particular visual expectations and reference points.

To really pull off a film like Before Dawn, and keep us engrossed during long slabs of minimal action, the dialogue and performances needed to be top-notch. A fresh perspective is also important in a genre that’s been so comprehensively explored. This speaks to the greatness of Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest : a genuinely unique film that observes war through a different prism.

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Before Dawn might have also benefited from contemplating what exactly the Anzacs were fighting for. An interesting response to this question can be found in Charles Chauvel’s 1940 film Forty Thousand Horsemen, when Chips Rafferty’s character, a member of the Australian Light Horse, answers: “I suppose it’s for the right to stand up on a soapbox in the Domain. The right to tell the boss what he can do with his job if we don’t like it. And the right to start off as a roustabout and finish up as prime minister.” Chauvel steps out of the trenches, so to speak, to engage in broader social discussions – something that is so rare in war films, including this one.

Before Dawn is in Australian cinemas now

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‘The First Omen’ Review: The Days Before Damien

A prequel to the original franchise, this debut feature from Arkasha Stevenson is a thrilling mash-up of horror tropes that gives the story new life.

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An older nun rests her hand on a younger one's shoulder as they look with seriousness across a room.

By Brandon Yu

If the “Omen” franchise left us with memorable tropes — the boy Antichrist, lurking among us; those dreaded three repeated numbers — the content of the movies themselves did little else. The original horror trilogy, kicked off by “The Omen” in 1976 , never had the sticking power of other classics in popular consciousness, and a 2006 revamp came and went. What could another attempt, this time a prequel to a middling franchise, really offer?

In Arkasha Stevenson’s hands, it can take us on a pretty fun ride. “The First Omen” is about everything before Damien (a.k.a. the Antichrist incarnate), following Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), an American nun-to-be that is sent to an orphanage in 1971 Rome, where social mores are shifting and things quickly begin to get weird. It’s a period piece that Stevenson’s debut feature plumbs effectively, giving the story both scale and some nice compositional punches, while setting the stage for an often delightfully pulpy narrative (the Catholic Church is not so holy after all) to how the Antichrist came to be.

The film revels in mashing up familiar genres: the monster movie, body horror and the Gothic church thriller. But it injects a revitalizing juice into the franchise — smartly edited and well paced, with a good cinematic eye.

And most important, Free is a game partner to Stevenson’s vision. She naturally embodies the seemingly delicate innocence of young Margaret, a softness that, of course, must eventually harden against darker forces. Eventually she is taken over, her body jolting and writhing to something beyond her control in an arresting scene that gives the oft-discussed subway sequence from Andrzej Zulawski’s “Possession” a run for its money. It’s another familiar nod with just enough of its own delirium.

The First Omen Rated R for violent content, grisly images, and brief graphic nudity. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters.

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Fallout TV Show: Ending Explained

The entire season is out, so let's talk about the ending..

It’s safe to say that at the end of its eight-episode first season, Prime Video and the Westworld team of Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have seemingly pulled off the impossible and successfully adapted Fallout for television.

While Prime Video's TV treatment doesn’t directly adapt any of the video game storylines, there are connective tissues throughout the show that call back to various games in the series, all culminating in a season finale which sets up a tantalizing new adventure to one of Fallout’s most beloved settings.

Spoilers for major plot points in the Fallout TV Series.

The Fallout TV Show's Ending Explained

The secret of vault 33.

Fallout begins 219 years after the nuclear war of 2077 decimates the United States and forces select citizens to enter nuclear war-protection shelters known as Vaults . Initially, it was set up to make viewers think that the story was a spiritual adaptation of Fallout 3 where our protagonist, Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), is forced to venture outside into the Wasteland and rescue her father, Overseer Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan).

Fans of the Fallout games know that each Vault set up by Vault-Tec wasn’t just a shelter from nuclear war, but also a testing site where the corporation could run various experiments on its residents. It’s initially suggested that the MacLean’s Vault 33 was designed to simulate a “perfect meritocracy.”

This is in fact not the case at all. In reality, Vault 33 is part of a trio of inter-connected Vaults alongside Vault 32 and Vault 31, the latter of which actually houses loyal Vault-Tec employees from the year 2077 who were cryogenically frozen. This was done intentionally by Vault-Tec to ensure that its most loyal and successful employees could be awoken in the future to take charge of what’s left of the United States after the war ends and when radiation levels on the surface subside enough for them to rise up and take command of the wasteland.

Vault 32 and Vault 33 were designed as “breeding pools”, with highly desirable genetic subjects for Vault-Tec employees in Vault 31 to mate with and produce successful, Vault-Tec-aligned offspring, including Lucy and her brother. This test would’ve continued to run unbeknownst to the inhabitants of Vault 33 if it weren’t for a raider leader named Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury) – later revealed to be the head of the scrappy remains of the New California Republic – who invades the Vaults and kidnaps Hank.

It’s a Faction vs. Faction World

True to Fallout, various factions exist within the Wasteland and the show creates a mcguffin that pits these vying parties together. Along with the aforementioned Vault-Dwellers and Moldaver’s NCR raiders, the show spends a lot of time focusing on the Brotherhood of Steel as well as the other inhabitants of the Wasteland.

It all begins when Siggi Wilzig (Michael Emerson), a scientist of the Enclave, escapes the compound with a mysterious blue pill injected into his neck. This pill, it turns out, is a cold fusion reactor designed to produce unlimited energy. It was originally developed in the year 2077 by Moldaver before Vault-Tec acquired the technology, only to shelve it as it threatened bringing peace to a world fighting over finite resources. And as we know, peace is bad for Vault-Tec’s business. The reactor kicks off a race between Lucy, the Brotherhood of Steel, and a bounty hunter Ghoul named Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) to acquire the reactor for their own personal reasons.

Prime Video's Fallout: The Brotherhood of Steel

The Brotherhood’s motives for acquiring the cold fusion reactor aren’t wholly clear other than they believe that with its unlimited power the Brotherhood will be able to conquer the Wasteland for themselves, and they send an ambitious squire named Maximus (Aaron Clifton Moten) to help the Knight Titus (Michael Rappaport) acquire the reactor.

While Lucy only wants the cold fusion reactor to use it as a bartering chip to free her dad from Moldaver’s raiders, Cooper initially sets out to collect the bounty on Wilzig’s head before finding out this bounty mission is tied to his own past.

A Showdown With Vault-Tec

Just as in the Fallout video games, Lucy starts off as a doe-eyed vault-dweller only to learn over her arduous journey that Vault-Tec is in fact not the altruistic corporation its image purported it to be. Instead, it’s revealed from various flashbacks to Cooper’s life in 2077 (where he is a famous Hollywood actor) that when Vault-Tec’s fortunes were threatened with a potential peace treaty that would make its hundreds of nuclear fallout shelters obsolete, Vault-Tec went ahead and launched its own nuclear weapons, thereby kickstarting the war themselves. They did so to ensure the company’s marquee product, the vaults, wouldn’t end up being defunct, unused relics.

It’s in these flashbacks that we get a glimpse of Vault-Tec’s true, sinister nature. Not only does Cooper’s wife and Vault-Tec executive, Barb Howard, reveal the company’s plans to drop nuclear bombs on America itself, but Vault-Tec makes a secret pact with America’s other successful companies like Westec to give them free reign of various Vaults throughout America for them to run their own twisted experiments. According to Vault-Tec, this would allow the companies to determine which one of them was best positioned to lead the post-war United States. In other words, a capitalist fight over the future.

However, what Vault-Tec and the other corporations didn’t take into account was the human tenacity for survival. While Vaults were reserved mostly for the wealthy, those who were unable to afford a place in the Vaults didn’t all just die off in the Wasteland once the bombs landed. At some point, 200 or so years after the first nuclear weapons were dropped on America, societies like the New California Republic rose up from the ashes with vibrant cities like Shady Sands as its capital.

While it's still a mystery how Moldaver survived for so long, it’s implied that she established Shady Sands which briefly served as a technologically advanced safe haven in the Wasteland. At some point, Lucy’s mother took her two children and briefly escaped Vault 33 and ended up staying in Shady Sands, at least until her husband found them.

As previously mentioned, Lucy’s father Hank is a dyed-in-the-wool Vault-Tec employee, meaning any threat to Vault-Tec’s supremacy needs to be squashed, including the New California Republic. In the final episode, Moldaver reveals that after Hank took the children back into the Vault, he not only dropped a nuclear bomb on Shady Sands, but did so knowing his wife was still there, turning her into a Ghoul.

What Happens in New Vegas

As the Brotherhood of Steel and Cooper arrive at Moldaver’s new base of operations where she is holding Hank hostage, Lucy learns the truth about her Vault and Hank, driving a wedge between father and daughter. As a fight between Moldaver’s forces, the Brotherhood, and Cooper breaks out, Lucy finds it hard to forgive her father. But that doesn’t matter in the end as Maximus — whom Lucy develops a romantic relationship with over the course of the series — ends up freeing Hank before Lucy could decide whether to even rescue him.

Hank proceeds to steal a Power Armor and attempts to leave Moldaver’s compound with Lucy before getting interrupted by Cooper who, remember, is also from the year 2077 just like Hank. More than that, Hank was a personal assistant to Cooper’s wife at Vault-Tec, having even picked up Barbara’s laundry on several occasions. Without support from her daughter and unable to return to Vault 33 — which has been taken over by another unfrozen Vault-Tec employee — Hank flees to presumably a safe haven for Vault-Tec employees, which is none other than New Vegas.

The glowing familiar sign of the Wasteland’s sinful capital is the final shot of the Fallout series, teasing a new adventure in the New Vegas strip for season 2 .

Is There Any Connection to the Games?

It was revealed that Todd Howard specifically requested Prime Video's Fallout creative team avoid any storylines that could potentially be used for Fallout 5. But that doesn’t mean the writers completely avoided dipping into Bethesda’s games at all.

While Prime Video's TV show tells an original story set in the Fallout universe there are threads that connect the show to the games. The cryogenic plot device, for example, is something the show borrowed from Fallout 4, where the game’s protagonist and other residents of Vault 111 were cryogenically frozen as part of the experiment run on the vault’s citizens.

Lucy’s journey begins with her setting off to find her kidnapped father, which echoes the start of Fallout 3. Meanwhile, the show sets up a second season set in New Vegas, which is of course the setting to one of the most beloved games in the series.

And those are just the big picture connections. The Fallout TV series does an amazing job weaving in references, big and small, throughout the first season which eagle-eyed viewers, as well us at IGN, have found littered around the Wasteland. The writing also functions on a meta level with Cooper at one point complaining about how the Wasteland somehow finds a way to send its inhabitants on time-consuming side adventures, just like how Fallout’s open world is filled with optional quests players can partake in.

Ultimately, the Fallout TV series once again raises the bar for video game adaptations following the successful Last of Us adaptation. And we can’t wait to see what’s in store next for season two.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's Senior Features Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd .

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Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
337,337 ratings21,881 reviews. With this stunning debut novel, New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver emerged as one of today's foremost authors of young adult fiction. Like Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why and Gayle Forman's If I Stay, Before I Fall raises thought-provoking questions about love, death, and how one person's life can ...
Before I Fall Book Review
Book type : Fiction. Publisher : HarperTeen. Publication date : March 1, 2010. Publisher's recommended age (s) : 14 - 17. Number of pages : 470. Last updated : July 12, 2017. From suicide to bullying, every tough teen topic is present. Read Common Sense Media's Before I Fall review, age rating, and parents guide.
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver - review. Samantha is given a chance to relive the last day of her life. When she wakes up the next morning after the accident which kills her, Samantha believes the ...
BEFORE I FALL
BOOK REVIEW. GLEANINGS. When your novel's heroine opens the story as a popular, mean highschooler, the story will be one of two things: a paean to Dolce & Gabbana or a tale of redemption. Sam's story is of the latter kind: a Groundhog Day-style repeated day she must relive until she gets it right.
Amazon.com: Before I Fall: 9780061726811: Oliver, Lauren: Books
Like Adam Silvera's They Both Die at the End and Colleen Hoover's It Ends with Us, Before I Fall raises thought-provoking questions about love, death, and how one person's life can affect so many others. With this stunning debut novel, New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver emerged as one of today's foremost authors of young adult fiction. For popular high school senior Samantha ...
Before I Fall
This review was created by the editorial staff at Thriving Family magazine. This coming-of-age book by Lauren Oliver is published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Before I Fall is written for kids ages 14 and up. The age range reflects readability and not necessarily content appropriateness.
Before I Fall
Although BEFORE I FALL is getting an incredible amount of attention, the book far surpassed my expectations. I must admit that I was a bit put off at the very beginning by Sam and her friends, who appeared to be the typical popular, beautiful mean girls --- shallow characters who have been featured in way too many books, in my opinion.
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
Before I Fall book. Read 21,267 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. For popular high school senior Samantha Kingston, February 12—Cu...
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver Book Review
Final Thoughts on Before I Fall. I ended up giving Before I Fall the full five stars and I truly think that it deserves it. It plays with different topics and ideas that are relevant today and that I think will remain relevant for a really long time. This is the kind of book that I believe a lot of people should read should they have the chance.
Before I Fall
Before I Fall is a 2010 young adult novel written by the American author Lauren Oliver. The novel is written in the first-person perspective of a teenage girl, Samantha Kingston, who is forced to relive the day of her death every day for a week. In an effort to understand why that happens to her, Samantha undertakes new actions each day, some of which are out of character and surprise her ...
Book Review: Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
Before I Fall Author: Lauren Oliver ISBN: 9780061726804 Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver tells the story of Sam Kingston, a pretty and popular senior who has it all. She has three loyal best friends, a great family with a sister who adores her, not to mention her boyfriend is the hottest guy at school. … Book Review: Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver Read More »
Before I Fall Study Guide
Before I Fall is a contemporary novel that leans heavily into the moment in which it takes place. While authors often limit their in-text references to popular brands, celebrities, technology, or media in order to prevent their novels from becoming dated, Oliver instead decides to use the cultural moment of the beginning of the second decade of the new millennium to provide a portrait of late ...
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
Author interviews, book reviews and lively book commentary are found here. Content includes books from bestselling, midlist and debut authors. The Book Report Network. Our Other Sites. Bookreporter; ... Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver. Publication Date: March 2, 2010; Genres: Fiction, Young Adult 12+ Hardcover: 480 pages; Publisher ...
Amazon.com: Before I Fall: 9780061726804: Oliver, Lauren: Books
Before I Fall. Hardcover - March 2, 2010. by Lauren Oliver (Author) 7,873. Goodreads Choice Award winner. See all formats and editions. Like Adam Silvera's They Both Die at the End and Colleen Hoover's It Ends with Us, Before I Fall raises thought-provoking questions about love, death, and how one person's life can affect so many others.
Review
This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022. To kick off our regular YA Wednesday, we are dedicating the whole of today to Lauren Oliver and her fantastic debut book - Before I Fall ! The book is released in March of this year, and is […]
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
Before I Fall was adapted into a major motion picture starring Zoey Deutch. It debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017, garnering a wide release from Open Road Films that year.Oliver is a 2012 E. B. White Read-Aloud Award nominee for her middle-grade novel Liesl &amp; Po, as well as author of the middle-grade fantasy novel The ...
Before I Fall: From the bestselling author of Panic, soon to be a major
Lauren Oliver is the author of YA novels Ringer, Replica, Before I Fall, Panic, Vanishing Girls and the Delirium trilogy: Delirium, Pandemonium and Requiem, which have been translated into more than thirty languages and are New York Times and international bestsellers. She is also the author of two standalone novels for middle-grade readers, The Spindlers and Liesl & Po, which was an E. B ...
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
Friday, February 12, should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it turns out to be her last. Then she gets a second chance. Seven chances, in fact. Reliving her last day during one miraculous week, she will untangle the mystery surrounding her death—and discover the true value of everything she is in danger of losing. Before I ...
Book Review: Before I Fall
It's truly breathtaking the way Oliver relives the same day seven times without an ounce of the story becoming redundant to the reader. Each day spent and each lesson learned is engaging and insightful to say the least. Before I Fall isn't just a story. It is 480 pages of thought-provoking observation and examination.
Before I Fall
With this stunning debut novel, New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver emerged as one of today's foremost authors of young adult fiction. Like Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why and Gayle Forman's If I Stay, Before I Fall raises thought-provoking questions about love, death, and how one person's life can affect so many others.For popular high school senior Samantha Kingston, February 12 ...
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
Then Vicky Hallinan's face came rising out of the past. I heard laughter echoing and rolling all around me, swelling into a scream. Then nothing. Before I Fall. by by Lauren Oliver. Genres: Fiction, Young Adult 12+. hardcover: 480 pages. Publisher: HarperCollins. ISBN-10: 006172680X.
Before I Fall
Although BEFORE I FALL is getting an incredible amount of attention, the book far surpassed my expectations. I must admit that I was a bit put off at the very beginning by Sam and her friends, who appeared to be the typical popular, beautiful mean girls --- shallow characters who have been featured in way too many books, in my opinion.
Aleksei Navalny Wrote a Memoir Before He Died in Prison. It's Coming
Before He Died in Prison, Aleksei Navalny Wrote a Memoir. It's Coming This Fall. In the book, Navalny tells his story in his own words, chronicling his life, his rise as an opposition leader ...
Navalny to Take One Last Shot at Putin From Beyond the Grave
A memoir written by the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in the final years of his life will be published in the fall, according to a report. The work titled Patriot will be published ...
Review: Book on Rural 'Rage' Is a Grindstone in Search of an Ax
The post Review: Book on Rural 'Rage' Is a Grindstone in Search of an Ax appeared first on The Daily Yonder. In White Rural Rage A Threat to American Democracy, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman ...
Book Review: 'An Emancipation of the Mind,' by Matthew Stewart; 'The
Taken together, two new books tell the century-long story of the revolutionary ideals that transformed the United States, and the counterrevolutionaries who fought them. By S. C. Gwynne S.C ...
Before Dawn review
A central performance from Levi Miller isn't enough to lift a run-of-the-mill war film that struggles to maintain dramatic interest Watching Before Dawn, it is quickly obvious that this first ...
'The First Omen' Review: The Days Before Damien
In Arkasha Stevenson's hands, it can take us on a pretty fun ride. "The First Omen" is about everything before Damien (a.k.a. the Antichrist incarnate), following Margaret (Nell Tiger Free ...
Fallout TV Show: Ending Explained
As a fight between Moldaver's forces, the Brotherhood, and Cooper breaks out, Lucy finds it hard to forgive her father. But that doesn't matter in the end as Maximus — whom Lucy develops a ...

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