Falling Into You - Jasinda Wilder
I wasn't always in love with Colton Calloway; I was in love with his younger brother, Kyle, first. Kyle was my first one true love, my first in every way.
Then, one stormy August night, he died, and the person I was died with him.
Colton didn't teach me how to live. He didn't heal the pain. He didn't make it okay. He taught me how to hurt, how to not be okay, and, eventually, how to let go.
I found this book whilst I was looking through Goodreads, when it popped up as something similar to another book. I was intrigued by the cover, and the blurb just pulled me right in! I was interested to see how the story paned out, and how the main girl, Nel, went from loving one brother, to loving another. I was interested to see how the 'pain' was written and to see just how emotional this read would be. Yes this is a book for the more adult reader as it does not shy away from the physical sides of relationships, they help the story to work.
Jasinda Wilder's writing had me hooked, and it took me on an emotional roller coaster. I went back to when I was sixteen and feeling giddy, I felt and remembered the happiness at that age. She makes you fall in love, then rips out your heart (much like a lot of authors), gives you some hope, and then repeats the process. She somehow manages to make you experience this along with the characters, (either one of them or both at the same time)! I will say that the way in which this book is written, is not my favourite writing style out there, and maybe in other books it would annoy me, but this book has a story that effects you in other ways and the writing style is sort of forgotten.
So we start off meeting sixteen year old Nel and sixteen year old Kyle. We get introduced to a few other, less significant characters, that I felt really didn't have that much of an impact on the story, and a huge impact was not needed. The start of the book explores an important part of a teenagers life, and how peers influence decisions. I wasn't expecting the book to jump quite as much as it does, if im honest I was expecting it to flow along day by day, but it does not. The jumping actually worked out better for the book than it would have if it was a day by day book. This jumping forward in time helps us to get background information on the story and the characters, and helps us see how they develop into the story about how Colton helps Nel deal with her pain.
It was good to see the changes shown between first love and loves that follow. The awkwardness of a first love is portrayed well, with the fumbling, curiosity and the excitement of something new, and having to be physical over and over again, purely because its fun and new. The difference between this and the later love is staggering, you see how Nel has matured whilst she was broken, maybe even because she was broken. The need to do be physical changes from being just because its new and exciting to being because it truly is a need, because it feels good, because its what she wants. We see how the first love is when you are young and carefree, and completely caught up in it, but the later love is different, its fully of things to worry about, things to feel. I felt this was really good as it portrayed just how relationships are in real life and how they change as we grow older.
This book is very different from the more adult novels that I have read, and maybe even from most of the ones that I haven't read, as it isn't necessarily a book about the physical parts, its a story that runs deeper, that cuts a lot deeper, and makes you feel the pain. I think that I would probably give this book a 3.5 - 4 stars rating overall, maybe pushing to a 4.5 stars.
Bye for now :)
