Thursday, September 28, 2017

The Fall Up

Confession: I have a book hoarding problem. It's not enough to land me on the TLC show Hoarders, but it's enough where Matt is demanding I make some decisions. Which he clearly doesn't mean because he put four new shelves up for me. I also have a problem with buying books that are pretty and then they sit on my shelf for me to read them and I always think, "Meh- I'll do that AFTER I read a new book I've yet to purchase.." and you can see how this got out of hand.

So with that, I've been on a mission to read as many of these unread books as possible off of my shelf, in between review books. I have had this book on my shelf well over a year, maybe closer to two years, but it came in one of my boxes from The Bookworm Box. It's signed by the author and isn't the cover pretty??


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.


I'm a sucker for a cover and you know it as well as anyone. I'm sorry this has been on my shelf, unread, for so long because I really enjoyed it enough that this would be one I would gift to friends because it's a fast read with a good story.

So we have Levee Williams, a successful pop singer seemingly on top of the world, but she currently finds herself on top of a bridge, wanting to jump. Enter Sam Rivers, a successful entrepreneur, also is on top of the bridge, for completely different reasons. He senses Levee's longing to jump and in an attempt to prevent her from doing that, he strikes up a conversation. Which they do a couple of times over the next few days.

Over time, they begin a relationship and that's when they both learn about each other's past, and Levee is forced to acknowledge the fact that she's working herself into the ground and her empathy is eating her alive. She's doing too much for everyone except for herself and she has to make serious changes in her life. Sam doesn't know if he has it in him to make the jump into a long term relationship, particularly with someone who needs so much support.

Drawbacks of the book were honestly really minor and I didn't think about it until I had finished the book, but their trauma that led them to that point were kind of glossed over. I feel like we learned more about Sam's trauma than we did Levee's. It's briefly mentioned in the book that Levee doesn't communicate with her parents at all and that's never really addressed again, and it feels like a string that was dropped, basically.

Things I liked about the book mainly center around Sam, I really liked his character. He's flawed, but he's trying. He has good intentions and you can tell he's just a genuinely guy. Levee is alright but she's almost.. childlike in a sense, and Sam has her best interests at heart from the start despite learning that she's famous, where lots of people would have taken advantage of that.

Overall? I'm giving this book a good 4 stars because I really enjoyed reading it and I was kind of bummed we didn't have more. I liked this enough that I really want to read other books by Aly Martinez and I'm going to put them on my Christmas wish list for sure.

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