A review by beetective
Falling Over Sideways by Jordan Sonnenblick
2.0
Going into this book was rather a mystery to me, I had read it beforehand years ago, but had forgotten almost everything about it.
I think that was telling of things to come.
Falling Over Sideways is a simple story about a 13 year old girl named Claire and her struggles with her father's recent stroke. She has other things going on like dance, middle school and playing alto sax in said middle schools band. To me, anything else outside of her father's stroke was boring. We have heard this story a hundred times before of a teenager struggling with middle school and the drama which comes with that, her father's stroke doesn’t seem to affect that lifestyle all that much, save for people being ‘nice’ to her. She still dances, she still continues to be good at alto sax only being dropped a chair and she still gets the same grades she would always get. Nothing is truly challenging.
The characters are when it starts to get worse. First off, Claire is just a dislikeable MC. I know teenagers are meant to be dramatic, but not to the point that it just becomes unbearable to read. She’s selfish, constantly thinking of herself and often refusing to see how other people feel. At one point she states how much she hates her family right after her mother buys her a 200 dollar pair of shoes. Which she never wears again. It’s very much ‘woe is me’ here and it never wears off.
Both Ryder and Salinsky suffer the same problem as each other: being given a pass for their terrible behavior because of one bad thing happening to them. Ryder has berated and acted hostile towards Claire for years just because she laughed at him one time. Salinsky gets away with putting students in danger (she screams at them during a school lock-down potentially killing them), assaulting students, berating them for years and just overall being a bad teacher because her daughter died. Are we meant to feel bad for these people? Are we meant to go ‘oh I understand them now’?
Overall, the story is very average with some completely dislikeable characters.
Rating: 3/10
I think that was telling of things to come.
Falling Over Sideways is a simple story about a 13 year old girl named Claire and her struggles with her father's recent stroke. She has other things going on like dance, middle school and playing alto sax in said middle schools band. To me, anything else outside of her father's stroke was boring. We have heard this story a hundred times before of a teenager struggling with middle school and the drama which comes with that, her father's stroke doesn’t seem to affect that lifestyle all that much, save for people being ‘nice’ to her. She still dances, she still continues to be good at alto sax only being dropped a chair and she still gets the same grades she would always get. Nothing is truly challenging.
The characters are when it starts to get worse. First off, Claire is just a dislikeable MC. I know teenagers are meant to be dramatic, but not to the point that it just becomes unbearable to read. She’s selfish, constantly thinking of herself and often refusing to see how other people feel. At one point she states how much she hates her family right after her mother buys her a 200 dollar pair of shoes. Which she never wears again. It’s very much ‘woe is me’ here and it never wears off.
Both Ryder and Salinsky suffer the same problem as each other: being given a pass for their terrible behavior because of one bad thing happening to them. Ryder has berated and acted hostile towards Claire for years just because she laughed at him one time. Salinsky gets away with putting students in danger (she screams at them during a school lock-down potentially killing them), assaulting students, berating them for years and just overall being a bad teacher because her daughter died. Are we meant to feel bad for these people? Are we meant to go ‘oh I understand them now’?
Overall, the story is very average with some completely dislikeable characters.
Rating: 3/10