Meeting Notes: Before I Fall

Our second installment of book club was another success. We are still trying to work out the kinks of videotaping our discussions (see next post for video segments), but we had a great time talking about the book, eating, and even dancing together. That's right. We danced.

Marissa hosted this time. We listened to music, sipped delicious drinks made with peach vodka & real peaches, and ate Marissa's yummy Mediterranean tapas.

Marissa made tortilla Española (delicious) and a chilled tomato cream soup. And, as I mentioned, the book club discussion was followed by dancing in Marissa's living room to YouTube songs that reminded us of high school. It was very nostalgic, very silly, and very fun. In all of these respects, it seemed like an appropriate way to finish off our discussion of Before I Fall.

Bess has summarized our book discussion below:
*Spoiler alert!!!

We enjoyed this one, and we especially liked how realistically the author portrayed the teen voice and lifestyle. The dialogue was fresh and the characters used some cute slang and nicknames, like calling the sophomores s’mores because they stick together and are so sweet. As Christina said (see comments in post below), the author also artfully wove in moments of lyricism.

Although we didn’t all give it a four, we also thought the way Sam Kingston (the protagonist) slowly changed over the course of the novel, from a selfish girl who is more worried about conforming than about the consequences of her actions, was very believable. On the day that Sam must live over and over, she is forced to watch those consequences play out again and again. (Now that I write this, it does seem a little tidy that her last day was such a consequential one in that way.) It really felt like Sam developed and matured over the seven days, but her actions never seemed out of character. The other characters were really well drawn too, except maybe Ally. The themes of loyalty and friendship resonated with us as well, for instance, how they would tell little lies to each other to protect themselves from ugly truths. If those lies paint over the consequences of their bad behavior, though, maybe that isn’t such a good thing.

We weren’t all totally satisfied with the ending, for various reasons. A couple of us thought Sam saving Juliet’s life (the girl her best friend Lindsey nicknamed Psycho) by sacrificing her own was the only way it could have ended. It was the action she needed to take to get out of purgatory, and her remaining alive would have been too convenient. But others of us wondered what the rules of this purgatory were. Why did Sam experience it and not Juliet? If Sam had kept Juliet from killing herself without sacrificing her own life, could she have stayed alive? I had a hard time caring about Sam knowing that she was dead the whole time and would never get to reap the benefits of the lessons she learned. And others of us (including Scott, again see comments below), were a little offended by the author’s treatment of Juliet. Sam got to play a role in ruining Juliet’s life and she also saved it, making Juliet nothing more than a device. The author dealt with that a little on the fifth or sixth day by having Juliet call Sam out on her patronizing behavior. But it may be that the author didn’t deal with that issue fully. We were also surprised Sam never thought about how dying to save Juliet would affect Juliet, or Kent for that matter (who we all thought seemed really cute). But in short, we liked this one and it generated some good discussion.

P.S. The bolded words are the “one words” we all chose for Before I Fall.

*Want to watch the video segments? We've posted them here. 

*Check back soon for Melisa's announcement of our next read (exciting)!