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    Falling into Place
    Falling into Place
    Falling into Place
    Audiobook5 hours

    Falling into Place

    Written by Amy Zhang

    Narrated by Julia Whelan

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    One cold fall day, high school junior Liz Emerson steers her car into a tree. This haunting and heartbreaking story is told by a surprising and unexpected narrator and unfolds in nonlinear flashbacks even as Liz's friends, foes, and family gather at the hospital and Liz clings to life. This riveting debut will appeal to fans of Before I Fall, by Lauren Oliver, and 13 Reasons Why, by Jay Asher.

    "On the day Liz Emerson tries to die, they had reviewed Newton's laws of motion in physics class. Then, after school, she put them into practice by running her Mercedes off the road." Why did Liz Emerson decide that the world would be better off without her? Why did she give up? The nonlinear novel pieces together the short and devastating life of Meridian High's most popular junior girl. Mass, acceleration, momentum, force—Liz didn't understand it in physics, and even as her Mercedes hurtles toward the tree, she doesn't understand it now. How do we impact one another? How do our actions reverberate? What does it mean to be a friend? To love someone? To be a daughter? Or a mother? Is life truly more than cause and effect? Amy Zhang's haunting and universal story will appeal to fans of Lauren Oliver, Gayle Forman, and Jay Asher.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 9, 2014
    ISBN9780062345714
    Author

    Amy Zhang

    Amy Zhang was born in China and moved to the United States when she was a young girl. She grew up in Wisconsin and recently graduated from college. She is the author of Falling into Place and This is Where the World Ends, and she currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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    Reviews for Falling into Place

    4/5

    157 ratings21 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I loved this book. It soothed my once teenage self.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      So yes this book is written about a very sad depressing topic but it was very well written. I especially enjoyed the style it was written with having the before and after thoughts. Did it make it a bit confusing at times and a bit harder to keep up with yes. But did it lighten up the mood and content of the book yes! This was also a lot more realistic account of survival before and after of a close friends attempt to take their own life. This was also a much more realistic account of what it is like to grow up in an upper middle class- upper class family with issues and thoughts /actions going on/ taking place. All In a very well done young adult book around this topic. Recommended for 8th-12th grade.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I love this book. Amy Zhang wrote a story where no matter how awful or great someone is, they’re always perceived as human.
    • 2/5
      It was ok. A bit all over the place so somewhat hard to follow at times. Unless I missed something, you're never told who the narrator was.
    • 5/5
       I bought this book based on nothing but the cover (turns out you can base a book on its cover), so I didn't know I was jumping into a story about teenage suicide. The jumpy story line is interesting and coupled with a mysteries narrator, the book is a compelling read. I liked the non-linear progression and how we slowly learned what happened at all the major events: people are complicated, why wouldn't their life story be? This story of teenage struggle and suicide reminds us all to not only be a person we would like interact with, but to be a friend we may one day need.
    • 3/5
      I liked the book way more towards the ending but I never fully connected with the characters. In fact, I actually despised them for a moment but it was so well written that I had to keep going. Pretty cover design too! Not the best but it will definitely keep you entertained
    • 3/5
      It was an interesting read, though depressing, but I fond the tone a little preachy and condescending for my taste. And the narrator being an imaginary friend was extremely distracting...
    • 2/5
      The narrator was irritating, and I wasn't surprised by who it was like the book description said I would be.
    • 3/5
      Amy Zhang has written an impressive, gritty debut especially when you consider that she wrote this book whilst still at secondary school. I loved her style of writing, it was beautiful and quite lyrical at times, but "Falling into Place" won't appeal to everyone. The story is told in fragmented pieces, before and after Liz tried to commit suicide. None of the characters are likeable, however, they are believable with flaws and insecurities, and somehow this book works. Well done, Amy! I look forward to following your career as an author.
    • 3/5
      Unusual writing style that I couldn't get into but others probably loved it! Author is a teenager so I'll be looking forward to more books from her in the future!
    • 5/5
      I received an ARC of this book from Epic Reads in exchange for an honest review.My first thought is that this book is very good for having been written by a high school student, but really this book is very good for anybody to have written. Zhang has an amazing talent for words. It is tragically poetic and hauntingly beautiful. Despite the seemingly slow pace, the book really grabs you and refuses to let go. I loved getting into the heads of each character and especially enjoyed the unique narrator.The one downside of this book is that reading through it rarely left me feeling very good about life. It's a tale of deep depression and everything going wrong, but there isn't much to balance out the negative besides a few fleeing glimmers of hope from time to time. I think the reader has to get into the right mindset before reading.However, overall I loved this book. I enjoyed how each chapter revealed a new secret and it gave a unique perspective into the mental states of high school students.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed the story but am quite confused as to who the narrator was. I liked the story told by the viewpoint of different students. I also liked the time line of the car crash. Those two parts of the novel I found quite intriguing. There were some very well written characters in this book. It is definitely for a bit more mature reader, but this is a story that many young adults will find interesting.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful book.
    • 3/5
      Liz Emerson doesn't care that she is beautiful, well-off, popular and has a boyfriend the other girls envy. The sham of how her life appears on the surface is brilliantly depicted in the debut novel by Amy Zhang, herself a teenager, in a nihilistic story of a girl who has had enough and is determined to kill herself.Drinking, drug use, casual hooking up, debilitating bullying, Liz and her circle do it all. Liz and her boyfriend are cruel and unfaithful to each other. She does horrible things to her friends, who stand by her even though they carry the wounds of those things. There is one boy who still cares about Liz despite the horrible thing she did to him. Her mother is never around; she's trekking around the world for work since Liz's father died years ago and can afford to buy a very fancy car for her daughter to deliberately drive off the road.There is no suspense that Liz will drive that car off the road. There is suspense in what happens afterward and parts of the story are not revealed until the very final pages.It is a horribly sad world these teens live in. Their hope was killed in them long ago. Moments of happiness are depicted mainly because their absence is another way to show what a horribly sad world these teens live in.Zhang keeps the story flowing with frequent time jumps and short bursts of story. There is the addition of a mystery narrator who occasionally comments on Liz's life ever since her father accidentally died in front of her when she was very young. It's a great touch because it is a way to show what Liz used to be like, as well as a way to look beyond the unrelenting depression of the teens' outlook.The author is so good at building that depressing world that a moment when that black fog lifts feels shoehorned in. Except for that, however, Falling into Place shows Zhang's adept strength at characterization and storytelling. This should not be her only work of fiction, but should be only the beginning.
    • 4/5
      Review courtesy of Dark Faerie TalesQuick & Dirty: Falling Into Place was a extremely heart-wrenching novel about forgiveness, friendship, and looking beyond people’s images.Opening Sentence: First law.The Review:Liz Emerson is popular. She’s the top of the social pyramid in her small town of Meridan. She’s loved and looked up to by some, hated by others. She has made some people’s lives, but more often she has broke them. And from the outside she seems fine. She goes to parties, she gets decent grades, she has a boyfriend. So when Liz Emerson crashes into a tree and is teetering on the brink of death, no one suspects she was trying to commit suicide. This is a deeply emotional story of a girl losing her grip on living and how she went from a happy, innocent child to this broken teen.Last year, I read The Fault in Our Stars. I really didn’t think that a novel could get any more depressing. Well, bingo — I found one with two times the sadness factor. Usually when I’m reviewing a book I leave notes in them for possible “memorable scenes” for the reviews. This book, I must have highlighted 10, 20 scenes on my nook that really impacted me, because wisdom filled passages were everywhere in this story. I couldn’t keep from being drawn in by the novel. I loved the writing style — simple, but packing plenty of meaning into each carefully chosen word. It wasn’t a typical contemporary, without a romance. There was a love interest but you saw very little of the main character and him together and never surely find out if they end up together or not.The chapters in this story were in three forms. One of them was after Liz Emerson got into the car crash. Another was scenes from Liz’s past, her recent past and childhood. And finally, there were chapters from some mysterious point of view that I couldn’t figure out. I didn’t know who it was!! I couldn’t catch a hint!! I kept thinking it might be her father, who died when Liz was small when he fell off a roof, but nope. I was horribly wrong. It took until the very last chapter for me to finally realize and there was a big “oh…” moment in which I cursed by inability to see the clues unfold. Sad to say, I’m not Sherlock. Anyway, these mixed point of views were very helpful in giving us a full view of how Liz’s story unfolded and I liked being able to see the process of how she became so hurt inside to commit suicide.Some people on Goodreads say that they didn’t like the main character, Liz. It’s true. She did some horrible things. But I think that being on the journey with her, it was hard for me to be mad, after watching her life unfold. I felt connected with her, and I cried with her and smiled with her. I understood her feelings, though our lives are very different, and I was so upset with the sheer amount of pain in her life. She felt responsible for so many things starting with a particular incident. In many ways, she was responsible, creating ripples that ended in a splash. Her friends also had trouble in their lives. One, Kennie, had an abortion and the emotional horror of that was exhausting and still plagued her. The other, Julia, is addicted to drugs. She can’t admit to herself, she tries to block it out, but nevertheless it stays.This book was such a journey. Your emotions are caught on a rocky path and stay there the whole book, swaying from happiness to sadness to feeling as depressed as Liz. And it all leads up to the inevitable end: will Lis survive? Will Liam get his girl? I loved all the characters in this book no matter what horrible deeds they did. I also adored the way Newton’s laws were worked into the story, how they wove in and out drawing the pages together. Every part of this book was full of feeling and meaning, never a dull moment. Let me make this clear. Someone looking for a light, fluffy contemporary with a romance is not looking for this book. It’s deep, thought-provoking, but not fluffy in the slightest. To people looking for cute, read Anna and the French Kiss, but not this book. If you open this up be prepared to be crying most of the novel!!Notable Scene:They had acceleration, she, Kennie, and Julia. They had mass. They goaded and mocked and multiplied each other, so they had force. They were the catalysts, the fingers that tipped the first domino. They started things that grew into other things that were much greater than themselves.A touch, a nudge in the wrong direction, and everyone fell down.FTC Advisory: Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins provided me with a copy of Falling Into Place. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review.
    • 5/5
      It is amazing to me that anyone can write a book; that they have ideas that they can verbalize for 200 pages and make people want to read them. The fact that a high school student can write a book, and a good one at that, is even more amazing to me. But Amy Zhang did it with Falling Into Place.Liz Emerson is a high school junior when she plows her mother’s Mercedes into a tree at high speed—on purpose. Unfortunately the attempted suicide failed, at first. A boy who has loved her from afar since 5th grade, Liam, saw the wreckage on the side of the road and called 911. The paramedics come and transport her to the hospital. There is extensive bodily damage, as you can imagine, and several surgeries are required. It is touch and go.What Zhang did with this book is delve into why Liz is what she is–a bully, an in-crowd bully. No one is immune to her barbs and her influence, even her best friends Julia and Kennie. The chapters go back and forth in time. There’s a chapter “55 Days Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car” and then “5 Days…” and then “45 Days…” There are chapters after the accident. There is an unknown narrator in some chapters marked “Snapshot”. However, it works.Zhang clearly delineates between the kids who truly care about Liz (Liam, Julia and Kennie) and status seeking friend wannabees who visibly weep, congregate at the hospital and talk about how wonderful Liz is. Liz is a real person who sees what she is, wants to change but can’t. She wants to make amends but doesn’t know how. The parents in Falling Into Place do not come off well in this book. They are absent, unobservant, domineering and the impact on their children is evident.Readers will like the people they’re supposed to like (Liz being among these) and dislike those they were meant to dislike.If Zhang can write a book like Falling Into Place as a high schooler, imagine what she’ll write as she matures and hones her craft. Read this so you can say you knew her when (and because it’s worth reading!).
    • 3/5
      Could do with a bit of editing, but a nice mix of If I Stay and Thirteen Reasons Why.
    • 3/5
      Okay, so first off. The jumps in time, the different characters that are focused on, and the point of view are all pretty non-traditional for this one. It messed with my head and I was confused if the "I" in the book was her spirit/conscious/a ghost, and maybe that's part of the mystery that drives the story. While it gripped me and I just had to figure out how all these pieces fit together, I can certainly understand where it will turn off some readers. So that out of the way, I think that this wasn't originally on my radar because it had a different synopsis, and at first it didn't necessarily catch my attention. But then I read about the suicide attempt and the interpersonal questions of how we effect each other and the relationships that is posted above got my attention so when I was sent this one, I decided to give it a read. Liz is also a hard person to like, I was okay with her in ways I could forgive until the Melody incident and even though she was so young and there was peer pressure it just seemed like the iceberg started to crack there. I know that it also sets up a foreshadowing and lets us see inside her mind at the moment, and see the struggle that was there. Oh and the physics aspect didn't do anything for me, constantly with the newton's laws. I wasn't pleased with the epilogue but the ending before that fit the book. I imagine though that more people would be displeased because it would be more of an open ending. Bottom Line: Unique perspective and timeline.
    • 5/5
      Falling Into Place is a novel that one must experience for oneself. To try to explain its intensity and its gut-wrenching drama is a task in futility. A reviewer just cannot do the story justice.One can safely say that Falling Into Place is a novel that every parent of teenagers should read. Its depiction of teens crying out for help is downright terrifying. These cries for help are even scarier because they are nonverbal to the extreme. Asking for help to Liz and her friends is possibly the worst thing they could do, so they don’t. Instead, they let their behavior provide clues. The only caveat to this is that one must be paying attention to read those clues and see them for what they are rather than typical teenage rebellion.Falling Into Place presents a fairly grim glimpse into high school dynamics and may frighten parents even more than Liz’s cry for help. For, it shows teens in all their self-absorbed, self-destructive, and mean glory. Liz and her friends may be at the upper echelon of the school, but the things they do to get there are simply horrifying. Yet, they are things that occur throughout high schools all over the world. There is a reason why people do not think upon their high school years very fondly, and Falling Into Place drives home that point.Liz’s story is chilling, touching, terrifying, and heart-breaking all at the same time. Ms. Zhang’s unusual narrator choice gives special insight into everything that occurs, both past and present, and makes Liz’s transformation into the girl she is now that much more upsetting. Falling Into Place is a novel one can easily digest in one sitting, but the lessons to be learned require time to digest. As such, it is a novel worth savoring and time spent reflecting. Because it is such a powerful story, to do so is anything but a hardship.
    • 5/5
      Thanks to Edelweiss and Greenwillow Books for access to this title.

      4.5 stars.

      This was such a great look at the other side of bullying - a look at what happens to the person doing the bullying. I know this is not always the case because there are those out there who just enjoy hurting others, but in this instance it was interesting to see how she just sort of fell into it and started to hate herself for it. To me it was a realistic view of how a person can feel worthless, even if the world sees them as a "popular" person.

      I usually hate a book that doesn't have a linear flow, but I found myself loving that aspect of this story more and more the farther I read. I especially liked the slow revelations of everyone's characters and secrets.

      A perfect read for those who loved If I Stay, and I will be sure to keep it in mind as everyone comes in for the book now that there is a movie. This is definitely for older teens as it includes sexuality, language, and drug use.

    • 4/5
      Terrific, honest, amazingly well written--recommended for young adults and their parentsReading “Falling into Place,” by Amy Zhang, was a riveting and heart-rending experience. I’m sure it is destined to be a best seller among young adults. But how about their parents and grandparents? Can they get anything good out of this book? Can a debut teenage author teach them anything they don’t already know? Absolutely! I learned a great deal of value from this book and I enthusiastically recommend it. But why should an adult read it? Personally, I believe that we learn best through experience and this book allowed me to experience a contemporary, wholly authentic teen world and feel what it would be like to have to live in that type of environment. It’s a world where dangerous alcohol and drug abuse are common, where kids are at the mercy of their raging hormones everyday, where popular bullies keep everyone in strict social castes, where breaking the rules means utter humiliation and becoming a pariah, where abortions are managed away from parental knowledge, where rapes are tolerated and assumed to be the victim’s fault, and where parents and teachers are clueless about what’s happening right under their noses. It’s a world with psychological and emotional landmines everywhere. Kids learn to negotiate this dangerous world by playing a role—a role that is governed by unforgiving, shifting, and cutthroat rules. Many feel they need to wear a mask and “stay in character” all the time just to fit in, escape the harassment, and survive without committing social suicide along the way. How can anyone growing up in that environment get a chance to discover who they really are? Many of these kids are terrified to divulge their deepest and innermost thoughts to anyone…even themselves. This book tells the story of Liz Emerson, the most popular girl in her junior class at high school. She’s also an emotional bully. She wasn’t always that way. She used to be the type of fragile child who had an excess of empathy, but that all ended in fifth grade when she witnessed another fragile girl being emotionally bullied in a horrific way. Liz knew she could never survive if that happened to her. So, she figured the only way to insure that she’d escape being the victim of a bully was to become the bully herself. She learned to hide her empathy away and live the life of a fraud. “Some nights, Liz looked back and counted the bodies, all those lives she had ruined simply by existing. So she chose to stop existing.” Yes, this book is about a teen who attempts suicide—in this case by running her car off a cliff. Liz grew up to be a teen who “was never careful with her life or anyone else’s.” Within her psychological core, she developed “a coldness, a deep cruelty, and a willingness to destroy anyone and everyone,” even herself in the end. She took on an impossible role for herself as unbreakable. She was a teen spiraling out of control, breaking apart at the seams, sinking into a deep clinical depression, and all the time she was wearing the mask of the unbreakable popular girl. There was one boy, mature beyond his years, who understood and loved Liz and was aware of her hidden vulnerability. He should have hated her; after all, she posted an incredibly embarrassing video of him on Facebook that made him the laughingstock of the entire high school. But long ago, he got over it and forgave her. He recognized that Liz’ problem was that she was afraid of being herself…of being breakable. There is so much to recommend this beautifully written and deeply honest book! In particular, I’d like to see teens and parents read it together and discuss it.