The Fall siblings live in hot Northern California wine country, where the sun pours out of the sky, and the devil winds blow so hard they whip the sense right out of your head.
Years ago, the Fall kids’ father mysteriously disappeared, cracking the family into pieces. Now Dizzy Fall, age twelve, bakes cakes, sees spirits, and wishes she were a heroine of a romance novel. Miles Fall, seventeen, brainiac, athlete, and dog-whisperer, is a raving beauty, but also lost, and desperate to meet the kind of guy he dreams of. And Wynton Fall, nineteen, who raises the temperature of a room just by entering it, is a virtuoso violinist set on a crash course for fame . . . or self-destruction.
Then an enigmatic rainbow-haired girl shows up, tipping the Falls’ world over. She might be an angel. Or a saint. Or an ordinary girl. Somehow, she is vital to each of them. But before anyone can figure out who she is, catastrophe strikes, leaving the Falls more broken than ever. And more desperate to be whole.
This novel has a lot of story lines, not in a bad way, but sometimes there are many things going on at once. That being said, some of the flashback scenes or letters were my favorite. You get an inside look at almost every character that is in this story, seeing who they are now and who they were before. This is then mixed with an older story, about distant relatives for the Falls and how that connects with what is happening now.
Each of the Fall kids has a different thing going on, Wynton is on a path of destruction, Miles is 'perfect' at least to everyone except himself and Dizzy can see spirits, all while wishing she was the heroine in a romance novel. They all meet Cassidy, the rainbow-haired angel, at different points of the story, when they need her the most. Once she has met all the siblings, it becomes a wild ride of learning deep family secrets, finding hope when all seems lost, and learning how to be separate from their ancestors.
The story jumps around quite a bit, to following Dizzy, Miles and Wynton, to Cassidy, to occasionally looking back at other characters. We get to see the loss that all of the kids feel, with Cassidy being left by her mother, and the Fall kids having their father leave them. You start to see how the webs of their lives intertwine as the story continues, with many plot twists I didn't see coming.
There were a few moments where I forgot the age of the characters, especially in flashbacks of Cassidy and her mother and multiple times with Dizzy. With Cassidy, it was definitely on purpose, she grew up really fast and therefore not keeping track felt right. With Dizzy, it was hard to imagine she is twelve, I feel like there is both a maturity and immaturity to her, especially with her brother's being decently older.
Overall, this is a powerful story from a really great writer, who hasn't published anything in almost 10 years! I was beyond myself to be approved for this ARC and really did enjoy the story is told.
I gave this 4 out of 5 stars!
When the World Tips Over is scheduled to come out September 24, 2024!
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