I picked up TUMBLE AND FALL after watching KNOWING one night -- because I have a strange fascination with storylines involving the entire universe imploding by the ending. And, the description of TUMBLE AND FALL on the back made it sound like a fun, apocalyptic tale from three separate (but intermingling) perspectives -- ultimately ending in a huge BANG, of course.

Well, don't quite be fooled by the promises of a killer asteroid doomed to obliterate humanity in exactly seven days -- because it never gets quite that exciting here, unfortunately.

Now, the asteroid part is true, in theory. From the first page, the reader is bluntly educated that the world will soon be ending and that there is nothing that anyone can do to stop the impact of this massive asteroid (AGH, I can't even remember its name! Persephone? Not particularly memorable, I suppose!). We are promised that the results will be immediate and devastating, and then we are promptly introduced to three uninteresting teenagers who don't, honestly, really seem all THAT phased by the news that they have only seven days left to live.

In fact, NOBODY really seems to be extraordinarily panicked -- there is not mass chaos in the streets, nobody is on fire, and all of the stores have yet to be looted by crazed lunatics who are desperately digging underground caves and tornado shelters to give themselves a last glimmer of hope.

No, instead, these folks are laying at the beach, getting a tan -- chasing cute boys -- you know, normal everyday end of the world type things, right?

So, back to the characters. We have Sienna, who has recently been released from a mental institution or rehab of some sort, because of her severe depression, and she is horrified to learn that her father is marrying a woman that he barely knows, on the beach, right before the end of the world. Sienna meets a cute boy, who is trying to build an ark (because a killer asteroid wouldn't hurt an ark (?!?!)), and leaves her family to seek a relationship with him. Then there is Zan, a young woman who is heartbroken by the mysterious death of her boyfriend -- who left behind a book with a secret phone number and a strange girl's phone number. (But don't get too excited for a scandal here -- boyfriend Leo was nothing less than a teenage saint of sorts!) Finally, we meet Caden, who was strangely drugged and kidnapped by his wacko father -- who, for some reason, was holding a woman hostage to prevent her from seeing her dead mother -- and who ends up buying his son a hooker. Yeah, I'm just not sure...

I kept waiting for the three stories to become intertwined at some point but (spoiler alert?) -- it never happened. There wasn't a lot of character growth here, unfortunately, and the whole asteroid nightmare really seemed to be more of an afterthought than anything else. Really, TUMBLE AND FALL is *not* so much a story about the end of the world as much as it is a weird, rambling contemporary story about three misguided teenagers who don't quite know what they want out of life.

Don't get me wrong -- it wasn't a horrible book. It just wasn't.... good.

But, to be fair, I did love the very end, even though I didn't get to see explosions. I'm a sucker for an open-ending that hints at a fun little picture of ultimate devastation.

If you go into TUMBLE AND FALL knowing that it is a semi-touchy feely contemporary novel, that isn't really high in action, intrigue, or development -- but one that occasionally mentions a killer asteroid -- I think you'd be fine with this novel for the most part. Personally, I wasn't all that impressed, but as always, your results may vary.