Review: Fall for Anything - Courtney Summers

Where I got it: Finished copy for review from publisher
Rating: 5 stars 
Cover Rating: 5 stars (These colors are completely perfect for the story's mood. I also love the photos in the background and how they relate to the book.)
Genre: Young Adult  
Publication Date: December 21, 2010
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Page Count: 230 p.

Eddie's father was once a famous photographer, but took himself out of the limelight. Now he has taken himself out completely and Eddie is left questioning for what reasons he would do this. Eddie frequently visits the abandoned warehouse where her father took his life. She hopes that by going there she might solve the mystery of his suicide. Her best friend Milo thinks it's morbid, her fascination in trying to figure out why her father killed himself but there's a boy she meets who shares her curiosity. Culler Evans was Eddie's father's only student and he too hopes to find some pieces of Seth Reeves left behind.

This was a novel about the journey of figuring out someone you thought you knew, a novel about suicide and the people it leaves behind and about how there are some places inside a person they can never share. This was a piercing tale of one girl struggling to cope with the mystery of her father's suicide and the people that she leaves behind with her depression. Her best friend eagerly wants to forget the night that it happened, because the memories are too painful and won't help Eddie get over the death any quicker. Unfortunately Eddie is stubborn and can't see that he is trying to help her, she only sees him withholding information from her. Then you have Culler Evans, who is just as intrigued by Seth Reeves' suicide as Eddie. He is also a photographer and Eddie aligns herself with him, since he feeds into her late-night excursions to the warehouse where her father jumped. This was a very interesting dynamic between the two of them, it reminded me of Lennie and Toby from The Sky Is Everywhere. In both books the characters come together under mutual sorrow for a person that they both knew differently. Their grief is so much that they cling to each other because they don't want to suffer alone. I loved the photography aspects of this novel, it made things a little more interesting. The best photographs were the ones her father left behind, and how they only add to the mystery of his death and allow themselves to be used for the characters' personal discoveries. I was fascinated by Eddie's obsession with her hands, even though it made since it was very weird. I loved how fully her mind was committed to believing that they really was something wrong with her hands now, after her father's death. I also really enjoyed the repetition in the novel. At a couple points Eddie goes through the same motions and emotions as she did earlier in the book and Courtney writes them the same way. It did a lot to show how stuck in her own pattern Eddie was, but also how she had to repeat herself so that she could do it right the second time. I thought this novel was just fantastic, even though it was gut-wrenching at times. Courtney Summers again created a realistic novel that highlights the parts of people that they try to hide.


First Line:
"My hands are dying."

Favorite Line:
"I don't understand why anyone would build it just to abandon it."