Publisher: Little Island Books
Source: Borrowed from library
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Blurb:
‘The rain was still falling, but the dark had parted…’
F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Luke falls. He has epilepsy.
And, as it turns out, he has much bigger issues too.
Esther falls. In love.
It’s wonderful – but there’s a shadow that she can’t identify and she can’t make go away just by loving Luke.
Luke’s experience has taught him to despise himself; Esther’s self-belief is fragile. And love is not as easy as it looks. Will they be still falling at the end of term?
A story about the struggle it can be to love someone who doesn’t love themselves – and why it’s worth it.
In October of 2015, I went to my first ever book convention, Dept Con 1, and got to meet so many amazing authors, both known and new to me. Sheena Wilkinson was one of these and after meeting her and hearing her talk about her novel I knew I needed to pick it up and was so glad I stumbled upon a copy in my local library.
I went into this book with medium expectations, I had thought it was going to be a light contemporary, boy meets girl, type of novel. It was so much more than that.
This novel absolutely blew me away. I picked up this novel after having done some study for my college exams as a way to relax and wind down, but a few hours later and I had finished the novel and could not stop thinking about it. So naturally I took to twitter to tell everyone how amazing it was (@Shannonbookworm).
This novel focuses on the protagonists Luke and Esther and each chapter the novels point of view alternates between them. I really enjoyed seeing the novel from both sides of the characters as Luke and Esther are such dimensional characters that I loved reading from their perspectives. Their relationship slowly built up and went through us and down that read as being real and really drew me into the novel. They may be one of my new favourite book couples!
The novel focused on a lot of issues from school, new friends, fitting in and first love to deeper and darker ones such as epilepsy, faith, family and lack of family, and more. Sheena has obvious talent as the manner in which she dealt with each issue raised in the book was flawless and read as being so real. I really enjoyed reading about Luke's epilepsy as it is a condition I know very little about. The diverse themes and steady pacing of the plot kept me gripped until the very end.
I did not expect to enjoy this novel half as much as I did. It has exceeded all of my expectations and definitely made it's way onto my all time favourites list. The Irish setting was great to read and Sheena's writing style, use of diverse themes and amazing characters all entertained me until the very end.
I can not recommend this book enough. Please go read it, you won't regret it.
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