Title: Fall from Grace
Author: Charles Benoit
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release date: May 8th 2012Pages: 304
Genre: Contemporary YA
Source: Edelweiss
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Grace always has a plan. There’s her plan to get famous, her plan to get rich, and—above all—her plan to have fun. Sawyer has plenty of plans too. Plans made for him by his mother, his father, his girlfriend. Maybe they aren’t his plans, but they are plans.My rating: 2 out of 5 stars
When Sawyer meets Grace, he wonders if he should come up with a few plans himself. Plans about what he actually wants to be, plans to speak his own mind for a change, plans to maybe help Grace with a little art theft. Wait a minute—plans to what?
Fall from Grace sounded like my kind of book. I'm a big fan of books about a main character figuring out what he wants to do, as opposed to what others expect him to do. Grace sounded like a very fun character, so I was definitely looking forward to reading about Sawyer and Grace together. And then there's the art-theft/compromising-your-values aspect, another storyline I usually enjoy - reminded me a little of Pretty Crooked, which I thought was very cute and fun. But sadly, Fall from Grace ended up disappointing me.
Sawyer was an okay character. I didn't really have a problem with him, but I didn't like him either, and I found it a little hard to feel for him. I liked reading about him in the family-storyline, liked discovering alongside him what he'd like to do. His relationship with his parents was pretty well-done, and I found the conflicts between them interesting to read about. But in a few other situations, like in the scenes between him and his girlfriend, I did not understand him at all. It was kind of hard for me to get into Sawyer's head - I wanted to understand his emotions and his decisions, but I couldn't.
I was expecting Grace to be a great character, powerful and fun to read about. But she didn't end up being as great as I'd hoped - she was just lacking something, in my opinion. Parts of her personality didn't make sense to me - she's an outsider at her school, and she seems mainly okay with that, but her goal is to become famous. Those two things don't really work together, in my opinion. I think the reader never gets to really know her - I kept thinking that some big secret would be revealed soon, that Grace has some issues we're about to find out about, but then... nothing. I wanted to know more about her family background, why she does what she does, but we never really got to understand her.
Maybe my main problem with Fall from Grace is the narrative. Fall from Grace has a third-person narrator, and we spend most of the time outside of Sawyer's head. It's a personal preference, but I generally like books better when we're closer to the main character. The way it is, I felt somewhat removed from the story - I never really connected with any of the characters, and I just felt kind of distant.
One aspect I did like is the art theft storyline. I enjoyed reading about the planning and how they wanted to pull off breaking into the museum. That part was fun and defitely unique.
But then... the ending. That ending frustrated me to no end. If it was all supposed to end up like this, what was the point of the story? And what was that stuff about Grace's motivations? I didn't get it all.
I didn't connect with the story or the characters, so Fall from Grace didn't really work for me. But Fall from Grace isn't a bad book, and whether or not you can connect with the characters is different for every reader, so I don't discourage you from reading Fall from Grace - it just wasn't my kind of book.
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