How to Fall

By Jane Casey, published by Corgi.

How To Fall

“Sometimes the truth hurts. Sometimes it kills…”

Sixteen year old Jess Tennant moves to a holiday home by the sea with her mum, to escape London for the summer. It’s Jess’s mother’s old hometown, where her side of the family still lives… except for one member.

Freya is Jess Tennant’s never-met-before cousin, and she died under mysterious circumstances a year before, plunging to her doom on the rocks after falling from a clifftop. When Jess begins her summer, she’s already turning heads in the town- she looks exactly identical to her cousin. Confused at the dismissal of her cousins death as ‘accidental’ she delves into an investigation, forming a list of suspects and determined to discover whether the death was suicide, murder, or if it really was an accident. Suspects include the mean queen of the town Natasha, and even the boy next door, Will. Along the way she’ll get tangled up in other situations too, one involving falling in love with Will.

How did Freya really die? And what lengths will Jess go to in order to find out?

I picked this book up this morning, and as soon as I began reading I couldn’t stop. Despite the huge amount of pages (just over 400) I read this book pretty quickly, and loved every second of it! Jess was a really great character; and I loved her from the start. She made a great narrator… She’s the twenty-first century, female version of Sherlock Holmes- inquisitive, determined, adventurous; the perfect detective! The other characters were absolutely brilliant too.

I loved the plot; it was a classic whodunit? story line with a twist of love thrown into the mix. There were lots of plot twists that kept me on the edge of my seat. I found myself guessing ahead, trying to work out who was the killer, and in the end I had gotten it totally wrong! The ending was really shocking, yet satisfying. The hint of secret love and teenage rivalry made the story more exciting than it already was, as the reasons behind Freya’s death all came down to the dating side of things. The story was realistic; with a strong essence of the extreme consequences of bullying.

Overall, I seriously enjoyed it and recommend it to any young adults, and of course to crime fans in general. It’s brilliantly written, and a really great, thrilling read!

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4 thoughts on “How to Fall

  1. Pingback: The Seven Stages of Novel-Writing | One Word At A Time

  2. Pingback: #RandomYACrime! | Books and Writers JNR

  3. Pingback: Book Review: Bet Your Life by Jane Casey | the bibliomaniac book blog

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