WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW
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| “Lying on my bed, my brain cyclones with thoughts of men and boys and boys and men. All making the wrong choices.”- The Girl Who Fell, SM Parker |
His obsession.
Her fall.
Zephyr is focused. Focused on leading her team to the field hockey state championship and leaving her small town for her dream school, Boston College.
But love has a way of changing things.
Enter the new boy in school: the hockey team’s starting goaltender, Alec. He’s cute, charming, and most important, Alec doesn’t judge Zephyr. He understands her fears and insecurities—he even shares them. Soon, their relationship becomes something bigger than Zephyr, something she can’t control, something she doesn’t want to control.
Zephyr swears it must be love. Because love is powerful, and overwhelming, and … terrifying?
But love shouldn’t make you abandon your dreams, or push your friends away. And love shouldn’t make you feel guilty—or worse, ashamed.
So when Zephyr finally begins to see Alec for who he really is, she knows it’s time to take back control of her life.
If she waits any longer, it may be too late.
Why am I reading another SM Parker novel two days after I gave her first book the low low rating of a 3.5 out of 10? I mean, in star ratings that's like 2 stars. Because, I wanted to see if her writing was even worse in her debut than it was in her sophomore novel, because if she managed that I'd be impressed.
Also, sometimes I feel bad completely trashing an author when I've only ever read one book by them. Except John Green. I will never feel bad about him.
So I picked up The Girl Who Fell, expecting a fairly run of the mill abusive relationship story, and that's basically what this book is to some extent. Interestingly, the writing didn't annoy me as much as the writing in The Rattled Bones did. I mean, it's not good by my standards, but it's inoffensive. Parker does have the same irritating repetition problem, and in this case it's the word flirt. It's also the way she uses flirt. Yes, the word is a verb, but that doesn't mean she can use it like this: "she flirts the cup from his hand" or "she flirts with her curtain of blond hair" and still have it make sense. Especially the first one, when it was so out of context I thought it was a typo (there's a fair amount in this book) and she meant to say flits or something like that. I get what she's trying to say, but it quite frankly sounds stupid.
I also found her dialogue to be cheesy, the same way it was in The Rattled Bones. I didn't think it was possible to have such unfunny banter, but SM Parker achieved it. I didn't even crack one smile during all these supposedly funny, flirty exchanges. Of course, maybe I wasn't supposed to because the guy's an abusive dick, but even if he wasn't, I think all those supposedly witty jokes would still fall flat.
Even though the writing doesn't quite suck as much, the characters are even worst than the ones in The Rattled Bones. Zephyr (gag) is, of course, a pretty, athletic, intelligent, perfect girl who supposedly wants to study marine biology at Boston College, despite the fact that she's never expressed an interest in marine biology throughout the course of the novel. Her only flaws are her abandonment issues coming from her father leaving, her curly hair, and her "too long legs". Yes, because too long legs is a real flaw, one that supermodels definitely don't have. Oh bite me, Parker, if you think that's actually a blight on someone's self esteem. I can buy the too curly hair thing, because most people with curls unfortunately hate their hair (I love curls, personally, and always wish I inherited my mother's naturally curly hair), but not long legs. So basically, she's perfect.
Then we have Alec. Alec is a very badly drawn caricature of an abusive boyfriend, who starts off perfect and ends up a monster. There is no subtlety to him whatsoever, and in this case I give Heather Demetrios credit. I wasn't too crazy about Bad Romance, but at least her abusive boyfriend was believable.
There's also her friends Lizzie and Gregg (no that's not a typo, he really has two gs in his name) (His nickname's even stupider- The Slice. I think they should call him Triple G, you know, like Double D). Lizzie is there because you need a best girl friend in every YA novel nowadays, and Gregg is there because, I don't know, we have to show Alec's jealousy somehow.
The plot's... well, it's kind of boring, to be honest. The introduction is actually good, gripping, like the beginning of a horror movie. You want to know what's going on. And then it slows down so much, that I found myself getting bored. You can't tease us like that, Parker! I almost lost the will to go on in the middle. It's unbearably predictable, and it's easy to tell who's behind every single bad thing that happens to Zephyr and her friends.
So, if I was bored in the middle, then I should like the ending, right? Because it actually has action? Wrong. The ending is when Alec truly became a Disney villain, which might actually be an insult to Disney villains. He reminded me of Clover from The Cellar, or the husband in Silent Child. I mean, what's happening should be scary and I should be at the edge of my seat, but it just struck me as being so unrealistic. It should have reminded me of that scene in Twin Peaks when Leo was trying to kill Shelly with a fucking ax, which actually did scare the shit outta me, but I couldn't care enough.
So yeah, somehow I don't think I will be reading anymore SM Parker books. Her books aren't even the enjoyable bad, they're just bad bad. I suppose I can kind of see her appeal, but as a whole, she's just not for me.
So yeah, somehow I don't think I will be reading anymore SM Parker books. Her books aren't even the enjoyable bad, they're just bad bad. I suppose I can kind of see her appeal, but as a whole, she's just not for me.
3.5 out of 10
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