I picked this book up on the strength of its cover along with a comment on a blog I read, plus the premise of "what happens in the week before the world ends" sounded like a new twist on the typical apocalypse fiction so prevalent today. The setup is simple - an asteroid is going to hit Earth, there's nothing that can be done about it, and there's one week left until it happens. The story follows three teenagers - Zan, Sienna, and Caden - during this last week on their island near Martha's Vineyard.

The writing was okay, with nothing special but nothing wrong with it either. The setting and characters were generally reasonably well done, again pretty mediocre but not bad. The stories...that's where it sort of went to shit. The only story that made sense and that I wanted to follow was Zan's story as she followed clues about what her boyfriend Leo had found and was doing the day before he died a few months ago. Sienna was more interesting before she left the mental health facility (which she does in the first chapter) and her father was a nit, her brother barely drawn, and her father's girlfriend kind of ridiculous. Caden...well, let's just say that his father kidnapping him to start off his story is really all you need to know about that.

None of these teenagers had any respect for their family at the beginning, nor any idea how to look beyond their self-centeredness which is natural at that age. However, for all of them to wrap up the story essentially in big familial hugs made me want to retch. The conflicts of being a teenager torn between friends and family made sense, but for say Sienna to choose friends and then not have the guts to stick to that decision was really annoying.

So yeah. Very meh story overall, with one interesting thread of three, a clue-by-four ending of FAMILY IS BEST OMG, and me being thankful that the book ended with an asteroid hitting the Earth. I really don't recommend this book to anyone, honestly.

I really enjoyed this book and am glad it's finally off my TBR!

Read This Review & More Like It At Ageless Pages Reviews

Tumble & Fall tells the interconnected story of three teenagers in the week leading up to the end of the world. Their stories are overwrought, soap opera fodder. The third-person present narration is personally distracting and hindered my ability to invest in the main characters, who are unlikeable, flawed, and self-absorbed. It features one of the most blatant uses of insta-love I've seen in a YA novel.

But if you stick it out, the ending is beautiful.

In the heart-felt, hopeful climax, I finally got what the last 380 pages were trying to do. And it wasn't pretty. I rolled my eyes and huffed. I yelled at the e-reader's screen. I was confused by loose ends. But teenagers are selfish, people act badly when presented with their mortality, and not everything gets closure. In showing this, I think the book showed a real understanding of humanity and felt refreshingly realistic.

Unfortunately, while effective, I wouldn't classify it as an enjoyable read. Zan and Sienna's plots felt like retreads of other contemporary dramas, (dead boyfriend's last secret and summer romance that Daddy doesn't approve of, respectively,) and Caden's was just odd. In a book that was sometimes unflinchingly realistic, kidnapping and extortion felt out of place. It's fitting that most of his scenes took place off island, because they didn't feel like they meshed with the rest of the book. Someone please explain to me the Camille scene. It was really out of nowhere.

Characters run into each other with too great frequency to really be coincidental, the general feeling that all of humanity is deep-down good and won't rob and murder during the end of the world is naïve, and it does shamelessly tug at the heartstrings.

But I'll be haunted by the last chapter long after I've forgotten the secret of Vanessa or Sophie or Owen's tribe.

In a world destined to end, there are still those who continue to hold out with hope. The story follows along with three teenagers and what they are doing with their last few days, along with their family and friends. For something that is so definite, many of the characters don’t have the same idea of what to do with their time. This gives the reader an interesting look at how different people really are.

The characters are very similar at the same time, so it’s not as if you are following around someone in Paris and another in New York, they aren’t that distinctly different. This also makes them a bit unforgettable and there were no characters I latched on to. For a story about death and destruction of the world, there was a lack of emotion for me. Many of the characters just went on with life as if it were a day off from work or school, which felt like an odd choice and not one I could relate to. Without having the surprise and twists and turns that make many stories enjoyable, due to the predictable ending of this book, I think it makes it harder to pick up to read.

Book Received: For free from publisher in exchange for an honest review
Reviewer: Jessica for Book Sake

I was really excited for this book when someone recommend it to me by saying it was about how the end of the world is inevitable and now everyone is doing what they can to die with no regrets. Which sounds amazing, and I was expecting something very somber and realistic. That is not this book, this book is not very good. It is almost like it was a reality T.V. show just a book and almost ridiculous...

3.5/5

Source: Received an e-ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to read this book solely because of how lovely I found the cover. My expectation of this was that it would be a crazy starcrossed romance filled with passion and young adults racing against the clock of the end of the world (I may or may not have read the official synopsis; okay, I basically just skimmed it.) Needless to say what I actually got was quite a bit different.

Yes, there is an asteroid heading toward earth that will result in destruction and yes, this book does follow young adults over the course of a week as the residents of earth prepare for the end. But it's not very romantic, despite what I feel the cover promises. We get three different perspectives of teens on an island struggling with lingering relationship issues, mostly familial but also romantic as they also wait to see what the asteroid will bring.

Right off the bat I noticed that the story was narrated in third person. Though I have enjoyed third-person narration, I tend to feel a more personal connection when it is first person and this book was no exception. Though I sympathized with the stories and situations of all three narrators, I never felt very emotionally tied to them no matter what they underwent. Even as I anticipated death for all of them, I never felt that sad.

Who are our three protagonists and how do they tie together? To answer the second question first, they don't have much of a connection; they just all have ties to an island and the final chapters put them all on the beach together.

First introduced is Sienna who is just released from a psychiatric home, picked up by her father to spend their last days as a family with her younger brother and the father's fiance. Reuniting with a childhood friend sparks a romantic relationship but also challenges Sienna's view on mental health and family. Second is Zan, mourning the death of her boyfriend Leo for ten months but suddenly confronted with information that might mean he wasn't as great as she always thought. And our third narrator is Caden, whose alcoholic mother and father who abandoned them means he has some lingering questions. I think I would have appreciated these more if they had tied together more directly. I understand that they all had unfinished business but a friendship among the three might have made it mean more to me.

Overall: An interesting read but one that lacked an emotional punch. I also feel like the cover promises a far more romantic story than it actually delivers.

I stayed up late just to finish this rollercoaster of a book. This book was simple and depicted everything humans today are searching for before the die. Some of the characters you might not enjoy (if you don't like girls who fall in love after saying hi one time ahem..Sienna... ahem.. then please avoid this book). I only read this book because the cover was pretty... the story itself did not live up to it's cover what so ever. Not even close. The end.

Tumble & Fall is a beautiful look at the inner lives of people facing the end of the world with love and grace. It is not a story of the apocalypse, and people who read it expecting action and last-ditch heroics will be disappointed. Tumble & Fall focuses on three teens and their families, living in a small island community, sorting out their relationships and priorities as they live through what may be the last week of life on Earth. The writing is lovely, honest, even funny at times, and the narrative moves at a fast pace. The focus on the three main characters keeps the story centered on the human impact of an impending global disaster, and it's the connections between the people that give this book its strength and its emotional impact.

I'll be posting a more in-depth review closer to the book's release date in September. For now, I'll just say that I'm so pleased to have read this touching book, and recommend it highly.

Disclaimer: I received a review copy of Tumble & Fall from Macmillan Children's Publishing Group via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

I was really excited about the set-up, but this just fell flat for me.

Despite the inevitable end, the novel manages to remain hopeful throughout. I enjoyed the introspection and lack of action, which was a refreshing approach to the “end of the world” type of story of which we’ve seen so much of in YA lately. I also appreciated that it considered the time leading up to a cataclysmic disaster, rather than the aftermath. It’s thoughtful mood worked and was a great contrast to other novels.

See the full review at wrapped up in books.