Who can survive the mighty Amazon jungle – The strongest or the smartest? What determines your survival – teamwork or the survival of the fittest? How far would you go to survive and where would you stop and let go?
Disclaimer: Thanks to the Author for the Review Copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
The plot
Six American teenagers are pushed to answer these questions when their flight crashes over the Amazon forest. The lone survivor Emily has PTSD, and her therapist asks her to write about her fateful journey. How the trip, her survival and her truth affects her life forms the rest of the story.
Emily Duran forges her mother’s signature to take the trip of her lifetime to South America with her high schoolmates. The school trip didn’t go as well as it was supposed to and their plane crashes over the Amazon. Now you see why I was hooked? – there are deaths, lots of it.
Emily and five of her classmates are the only survivors of the crash. Fortunately (or was it?) Emily had her best friend Vivian and her boyfriend Nico to fall back on. The teenagers decide to walk away from the wreckage in search of some village. (Why? Who does that?)
Where there are high schoolers, there drama usually ensues, doesn’t it? That is true. The status quo of the survivors changes all of a sudden, thanks to the new environment. The popular ones do not have much to rely on anymore, do they? Lies, deceits and secrets catch up and pit them against each other.
How does the average, crowd-pleasing Emily become the only one who stays alive? Read Feel Me Fall to know more.
The story travels between the pages of Emily’s diary and the thrilling past from the tropical forest, making it a fast-paced compulsive read that will impress readers of all ages. I have had the opportunity to beta-read some of the other works of the author, and it took all of me (and failed) not to have a ‘fangirl flail moment‘ when I got the request to review his books. And he did not fail to impress me, despite my expectation being high.
I loved how every character was different from the other and how the author handled the dynamics between them very well. Be it the failing mom-daughter relationship or the more scandalous student-teacher relationship, they made sense and fit into the grand scheme of things (you know, not thrust in, just for the heck of it) and had depth in them.
Things that worked for me
The author’s writing style is crisp and to the point, without having too many descriptions, yet I could visualize everything that happens in the story.
The book’s premise might remind you of other survival books but I can assure Feel Me Fall is better, even if you vehemently hate high school drama.
Spoiler: The story contains a teacher-student relationship, and it is vital to the story and dealt in detail, so if you are not comfortable with this or they turn you off from the book, you might have to skip Feel Me Fall
Bottom-line
If you are on the lookout for a thriller with twists and unexpected turns which would never let you put the book down. Feel Me Fall is the book for you. Be prepared to be shocked and surprised pleasantly with this tight knitted YA.
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Let us chat
Have you read any books by the author? What are your favorite genres? Do you like books with open ends? Let us talk.
I LOVE BOOKS. But that shouldn’t come as news to you. You are here on my blog, so you would know. I am just not a bibliophile; I love everything related to books. I love the book smell, the library, bookish characters, of course talking to the authors and everything and anything that falls between these obsessions.
While I love talking about books and hearing / reading your thoughts about any book, I can not somehow join the bandwagon that everyone (am looking at you Buzzfeed) calls as being a book-nerd. (Does anyone get as annoyed as I do when people overuse ‘nerd’?).
My unpopular bookish opinions
Why, you ask? I do not conform to the popular (read as mainstream) norms and opinions of the book world according to the Internet. Here are my top 10 unpopular bookish opinions.
10) I don’t give books ‘star ratings’.
Until a short while ago, I rated books too, but I have liberated myself from the obligation to summarize all my feelings about a book to a star rating. I don’t want to be struggling to decide if I should give the book a 3 star or 3.5 star. Or worse, to give two very different books the same rating when they clearly aren’t. Read more about my issue with ratings here.
9) I am rarely a fangirl
It might come as a shocker to some people and even confuse a few. I might love the plot and writing and still hate the characters or feel meh about them. I rarely have a fangirling moment, but when I do, I can not stop gushing about them.
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8) I still have not lost my love for people.
Sure I might be misanthropic sometimes. And even wiggle out of meeting friends because I don’t feel like it. Oh, I might hate talking to you right now because I have a book in my hand and I would rather finish that than gossiping with you.
Well that is me! But none of that is due to my love for books. Not all book nerds have to be introverts or speak like a geek and be adorkable (I am looking at you, John Green). If you do, it is great and if you don’t it is great too!
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7) Some movies are better than books
I find no qualms in saying that there are some movies that have been better than their books. I am not going to deny that. Though I mostly prefer books to movies or TV series, there have been times that movies were as good as the books (like Gone Girl, The shining) as well as some that did better than the books (LOTR, PS I Love you, The room).
6) I prefer stand-alones to series
I don’t read book series. There, I said it. While every other book lover I know reads and obsesses about series after series, but I don’t have the patience to wait for the next book to be released. Or by the time it does get published, I would have forgotten all about it.
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5) Book-nerds are not as judgemental as they seem
The Internet people all over the world seem to love bashing (read as, critique reviewing) titles like Twilight or Fifty shades, etc. Even I am guilty of doing that. I am yet to meet any book lover in real life to judge someone who reads something they don’t approve.
We might do that over the Internet; it is yet one other thing that the big bad mean world of the web makes us do. In real life, I am sure any book lover would feel a sense of bonding to see a book in your hand, whatever kind of reader you might be.
4) I don’t organize my bookshelves by color
I love spending hours gawking at #bookstagram. Come on, who doesn’t like looking at beautiful things? But I know it is not for me. I still arrange my books based on genre and then the size. And I still pick function over design.
This is probably one of the most unpopular bookish opinions.
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3) I am not cover obsessed
I don’t mind your judging the book by its cover; not at all. But I am surprised how far my fellow book people go with their cover obsession. It might have all started with the cover reveal parties; at least these parties, i.e., series of promotional posts have made book covers a huge deal.
I know friends who want the covers of all the books they own in a series to match. And if they don’t, they even buy multiple copies only for the covers. Sure they are pretty, but aren’t they a wee bit overboard? Maybe it is just me.
2) I highlight and dog-ear my books, sometimes… Rarely.. Okay never! But I don’t mind them
I treasure my books. I seldom lend them. And when I do, I may keep politely reminding (nudge or nag, rather) them until they give it back. Yet, I don’t mind an occasional highlight or dog-ear in my books. I don’t get a panic attack when some one does that.
Hey, I love loved books that I find from the thrift stores.
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1) I don’t mind the spoilers
While the entire world is going crazy over the leaked spoilers, I for one don’t mind them at all.
So go on, tell me all about the book you loved, I still would read it without despising you. Spoilers are not a huge deal to me.
Credit: Giphy
#Bonus: My non bookish unpopular opinion
I don’t understand pet parties.
I don’t, but I am almost sure your pets don’t enjoy wearing those party hats. The number of pet party supplies I see around my place is ridiculous. If you want to make them happy, let them be.
Most of us read to escape into new worlds of our own. Imagine curling up in the bed with a cup of coffee and a book on a rainy day. (Scratch that, I don’t need a cup of joe if it would mean I have to stop reading while I sip the drink.) What could be better than that? Maybe sitting in a library amongst thousands of books with your nose buried in a book. Go ahead tell me what else could a book lover enjoy more?
I read comfortably in public, especially during our commute. Many of us do. Some readers put on their headset to drown the white noise, to drown the chaos around them, to focus better on their book. Few of us do not even need a headset, we zone off and turn deaf while we pick an interesting read until your mother (or someone else) pulls you back to Earth. Books and reading are our solaces, a Zen zone where nothing could go wrong or even if it did things would turn better before you reach the last page. Mostly. One way or the other.
As far as I remember I always had a book for a company when the going got any slower. Of course, there have been phases in my life when I enjoyed sharing the passion of reading with others by discussing whatever I read with them, but they have always been short-lived. I even started this blog to primarily talk about the books I read, since I couldn’t find anyone to listening to my rants. But things have changed. A lot. You ask why? Reading became social.
Don’t get me wrong. I love being online as much as do, even more than the average Jane does. But still reading is a lonely activity for me. I like to choose my books to obsess hate or write about on my own. My reading interests do not confine to any one single genre. I read about the Holocaust with as much interest as I have about boys worshiping girls. I love Stephen King and Gillian Flynn as deep as my love for Agatha Christie and Mark Twain. I even read Warran Buffet for the heck of it. You get my drift? This means I get to ‘ ‘ship’ or ‘fangirling’ over too many characters.
Of course, social reading is fun and there is always something on your plate to read. You get to meet so many like minded people who will love join your tribe to defend the character you so much. Someone who keeps you updated with the latest gossip from the book world. A book turning into a TV series? You will know it before others. Oh, and the free books that you get to review!
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Yet, reading these days could be exhausting.
Once I finish reading a book, and after having the proper emotional break down the book deserves, that includes but not limited to crying, grinning, shaking your head ‘cuz you can’t even‘, scared that you would be having nightmares and even understandable relief that it ended, I update that I have finished reading the book and what I thought about it in few words on Goodreads, Twitter, Facebook and only because Google is the Lord, Google+. And then talk about it in every one of the Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter groups that I am part of. Defend whatever my thoughts were and defend or accuse the characters’ behavior, as need be, in that book and the series. If someone doesn’t agree, of course, attack another character that the person loves and if you can, make them cry. Well, after all this is done, start the process over by writing a review and posting in all the channels mentioned above.
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Well if you think that is too much, you have not heard the half of it. We just covered the process I go through for a book I read. There are books that I want to read because I do, I have to read because everyone is reading it, I want to own because they look cute and go with my shelf and even books whose cover do not match with the covers of the books I own in the series. Then I follow the authors, their new releases and the requests I have to place and that I have received from the authors for review. Well, it is too tedious even to explain anymore, I give up trying to.
One of my coolest friends was telling me he stopped updating his Goodreads profile after seeing people desperately bumping their ‘read counts’ just to show off. How did a self-satisfying hobby turn into a community driven project so soon? Do we not desire to disconnect from the world anymore? Or have ‘the books’ become the next ‘cool sport’ to bond over? Is reading still a selfish, solitary process or a shared social experience for you? Let me know in the comment section.
