Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Synopsis: 

Liz Emerson is not what she appears to be. To her two best friends, she's the glue that holds everything together, the main attraction. To everyone else she's a force to be reckoned with, someone to be feared and revered. To herself, Liz is a failure. She is miserable despite the fact that every one wants to be her. The cards life has dealt her, combined with the lives she's ruined, contribute to the conclusion that she comes to. Liz decides to commit suicide by driving her car off a cliff.

I had expectations for this book. Hardly any of them were met... BUT, I will start off with the good news. 

Likes:

The writing style and the dialogue. Amy Zhang has a way with slipping in beautiful sentences during a morbid time. It wasn't overkill. She issued them out like sweet treats so the readers don't overdose on too many wordy metaphorical sentences. The characters were also well depicted. The personalities between Liz and her friend gelled together so well. However, that's about as good as it gets for me. 

Dislikes:

Oh geez, where do I start? Let's begin with the most obvious thing. The sequence of the chapters. Everything was out of order... Although I was able to keep up, it still didn't subtract from my irritation. And irritated I was. Zhang would go from 45 mins before the crash, to 3 days before the crash, then she would throw in a major flashback, or a snapshot of random thoughts. She took my mental for a spin. I understood what Amy Zhang was trying to do, but I think she tried a little too hard. 

         Next, the plot. Some of it was cliche. Dead parent, mom not giving her enough attention, popular at school, boy who likes her but is unnoticed by her. None of the story really stood out to me. Not to mention the lack of solution in the story. We get to know Liz is thinking of repentance but we don't get to see it acted out? We don't get to find out what she's thinking while she's unconscious? 

I feel as though Amy Zhang robbed her readers of the satisfaction it would bring to see Liz wake up and to see her give an explanation to those she owed. Instead, Zhang decides to press the fast forward button where Liz is already going home from the hospital after probably being there for a couple months (cause she was pretty banged up) , HOLY CRAP Zhang! You skipped so much! Seems like she just got lazy and hastily wrapped everything up because she finally saw how unoriginal her story was. 

K bye!