The Fall Up

Author: Aly Martinez

Publisher: N/A

Genre: New Adult, Romance

Release Date: October 26th 2015

Format: eBook

Page Count: N/A

ISBN: N/A

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Author Website | Amazon | Goodreads

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“I hated every single minute of ‘fine’. There had to be more out there. There had to be a ‘great’ lurking in the shadows.”

It is important to know that I almost never read any New Adult / Romance novels and it takes a lot for me to enjoy stories from within this genre. I personally have a hard time reading excessively cheesy scenes and dialogue without rolling my eyes or suffering from second hand embarrassment. That being said, these types of stories are very difficult for me to review which is why I typically don’t read anything from this genre.

However, once in a blue moon, I tend to want to read something lighter in nature that doesn’t require a lot of thinking on my end and that typically leads to me reading something from within the New Adult/Romance genre.

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Goodreads synopsis: I wanted to jump. He made me fall. As a celebrity, I lived in the public eye, but somewhere along the way, I’d lost myself in the spotlight. Until he found me. Sam Rivers was a gorgeous, tattooed stranger who saved my life with nothing more than a simple conversation. But we were both standing on that bridge for a reason the night we met. The secrets of our pasts brought us together—and then tore us apart. Could we find a reason to hold on as life constantly pulled us down? Or maybe there’s only one direction to go when two people fall in love at rock bottom—up.

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I was browsing through Goodreads, as I typically do on a daily basis, and The Fall Up kept on popping up on my feed. The front cover is definitely aesthetically pleasing and it was a big part of why I even clicked to learn more about it in the first place. I was actually quite surprised about how intriguing the synopsis was and the amount of good reviews this story was getting. The Fall Up was extremely cheap on the Kobo website and I was suffering through a bit of a reading slump, so I figured now was as great a time as any to pick something up that was a slightly lighter read.

Unfortunately, as intriguing as the premise was, the whole thing fell pretty flat for me.

The Fall Up centres around the lives of Levee and Sam, Levee being a huge superstar celebrity and Sam being the handsome tattooed stranger she meets while contemplating suicide on the top of a bridge. Although this could technically be a believable story, the fact that Levee’s security guard, Devon, is in her escort car watching/waiting for her while she’s standing on top of a bridge with a random stranger is pretty strange. Is he just a terrible security guard or? Of course, Levee then continues to be driven by Devon to the exact same bridge to meet up with this random stranger. I’m sorry I know it’s a work of fiction and I should let some things slide, but I just can’t overlook how unrealistic that is.

Sadly, the characters were pretty bland. We had an amazing opportunity to learn more about Sam and Levee, but unfortunately this opportunity was missed as the backstories of these characters were largely overlooked. We had a quick look into Sam’s past, but there was almost no detail about Levee’s other than a quick look into her family life.

What’s funny is this book could have been great. There were adorably cute moments and funny dialogue during normal conversations between Sam & Levee, but as great as these moments were, they were overpowered by some pretty awkward and embarrassing scenes. Now, here’s where this review gets fun. The sex scenes. I mean, like I said, I don’t read this genre often, but I really hope sex scenes aren’t written like this in every single New Adult/Romance novel. I mean…holy crap did the characters ever talk a lot, and it wasn’t even erotic or attractive. In my opinion, the amount of dialogue during these scenes should have been cut to a minimum. Some of the language used by the characters was so out of place and ridiculous, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. The author definitely should have spent more time describing these scenes than having the characters speak throughout their entirety.

As much as I really wanted to enjoy The Fall Up, I just couldn’t. Obviously the New Adult/Romance genre is not for my or my personal tastes. I think it might be a while before I pick up anything from this genre again any time soon.