Review: While I'm Falling by Laura Moriarty

Veronica is a junior in college and she's trying to balance her life: she hates her job in the dorm, she's flunking classes in her major, she's conflicted about her relationship with her boyfriend, and her parents are getting divorced. She is sinking in angst and when she reaches out to her mother for help, she finds that the safety net she's always expected is no longer able to support her. And her father is equally inaccessible to a young woman fumbling through life trying to keep her head above water.

Starting out with a singular focus on Veronica, the novel eventually broadens to include her mother's perspective as well as Veronica's so the reader has a better perspective on what is driving her mother than Veronica does. It can be hard to sympathize with either Veronica or her mother given the problems facing them are so very often of their own creation but anyone who has lived through the thoughtless decisions and complete self-involvement, blinders if you will, of college life will agree that this portrayal, while perhaps a bit excessive, was well done and realistic. Some of the events in the novel seemed a bit rushed but not entirely outside the realm of possibility given how fast divorce can and does bring some people to their knees. This is a novel meaty with issues: divorce, fidelity, the pursuit of happiness, and ultimately the power to go on regardless becoming a little more forgiving, a little more understanding, and a little less self-centered.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a review copy of this.