I wanted to talk a minute…… about Kate Brauning’s debut novel, HOW WE FALL.
First, some full disclosures: One, Kate is my agency mate, and two- I’m really not the target audience for HOW WE FALL.
So, I did what any good reviewer would do, I enlisted the help of my 17 year old daughter – who 100% IS the target audience for Jackie and Marcus and their “taboo” love story.
I was fortunate enough to read an ARC of HOW WE FALL a little earlier this summer, and when I put my daughter on a plane for a month in France (tough life), she took the book with her to read. Here was her reading room:
I found HOW WE FALL to be a propulsive read, with relatable characters caught up in a very unusual situation. Jackie and Marcus are cousins, living under the same roof (a communal home involving a lot of family members), and struggling with a mutual attraction that has grown over time. Set during one particularly hot summer, their relationship is tested by a new girl in town (Sylvia) who is attracted to Marcus (and may be a lot more than she seems), and the ongoing mystery of the disappearance of Jackie’s best friend, Ellie. Jackie and Marcus alternately push and pull away each other, ashamed of their feelings, but unable to hide them or ignore them.
It’s an interesting dynamic, and one that I think is the book’s strength. Some of the secondary characters are also particularly good (Jackie’s “little bit more than a friend” – Will), and the small town nature of their lives – and the attendant prejudices – feel very real, and all of that is so strong and handled with such a deft hand, that it tends to overshadow the mystery of Ellie’s disappearance. In some ways, that mystery doesn’t even seem quite as important to Jackie herself, who spends as much time in the early going of the book worrying about Marcus, as she does her lost friend.
That, however, is a minimal complaint – and probably the point, after all. The true story is Marcus and Jackie. Although I don’t recall ever reading any book dealing with an amorous relationship between teenage cousins, however one feels about it – and the decisions Jackie and Marcus make in the closing chapters are worth a few discussions and debates – the book does a compelling and sensitive job of handling the thorny questions and issues that might arise from such a relationship. Not only for the “couple in love,” but for the family and friends who love them as well.
And that’s exactly what happened after my daughter got back from France. We had long talk about the book, about the relationships in it, and about the laws/taboos of attraction and romance. Let’s be honest, no 17-year old wants to have a conversation with her dad about boyfriends and such, but with minimal embarrassment, and for my sake, she suffered through it (and a milk shake helped, too). She thought the book was engaging, liked the characters (she liked Will, too), and asked me the one question that any author loves to hear:
When does her next book come out?
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