Fall for Anything: Review

Title: Fall for Anything
Author: Courtney Summers
Release Date: December 2010
Published By: St. Martin's Griffin
Genre: Contemporary
Pages: 230 pages
Goodreads Rating: 4.28 stars

Review: Eddie's father was a legendary photographer. Though he had long since faded out of the public eye, he was well-known in certain circles and found inspiration everywhere. He had a wife and daughter who loved him and his art to sustain him. And yet one day, he committed suicide. Eddie wants to know the answer to the most complex yet simple question: why? Culler Evans seems to know - he found messages left in abandoned places frequented by her father, and the two of them embark on a trip to discover the meaning behind them. Except her search for answers only seems to raise more questions.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of FALL FOR ANYTHING is the prose. Dark and beautiful, the words catch hold of you and refuse to let go. It's easy to sink into a dream-like state when reading the pure poetry of Summers' writing, until the gritty, honest truths she exposes slap you in the face. This is not the kind of book you flip through, but rather the kind you sit down and get lost in, savoring each sentence and letting the wonderfully confusing, beautifully ugly emotions flood through you.

The book is small, but don't be misled by its thin spine. The pages pack a heavy punch and wreak havoc with your feelings, making you as depressed, as grieving, as angry as Eddie. You become her on her quest for truth, searching for answers to the hardest question, even as you know it can only ever be impossible. You have her vulnerabilities, her strengths, and just like her, you fall in the dizzying spiral of dangerous love with Culler.

Eddie, Culler, Milo - these are all real characters, painfully so. They're not the shallow archetypes of grieving people so often shown in "issue" books, nor are they shrouds of gloom that float helplessly through their lives. Each one is fully developed and three-dimensional, dealing with their very different and very similar hurts in their own ways.

FALL FOR ANYTHING is a raw book. It's not pretty, nor is it the sort of thing you read when in need of a pick-me-up. This is the most honest kind of book in that it grabs harsh reality and slaps it on the page, undiluted. The writing is lyrical with gritty emotions that seep through every word. This was the first book by Courtney Summers I've read, but it won't be the last.