It’s taken me a while to put my tangled, jumbled thoughts on How Not to Fall into a somewhat coherent string of words. But I did it! Hopefully! When I first heard about this book after doing a podcast with Sarah and Emily (truly a highlight of my SBTB career, I must say), I lost my mind. It sounded smart and sexy, and if you know me, smart people doing sexy sex things is my jam.
However, after finishing the book (and while reading), I felt such a weird conflicted range of emotions. Did I enjoy it? Yes, absolutely. Was it without its flaws? No, of course not. But where did my enjoyment eclipse my complaints? Did they?
Well, let’s hop on this crazy train and see if I can try not to project verbal diarrhea all over you. Choo choo!
At first, I thought this was going to be a sex-filled, friends-with-benefits scenario. Smart heroine Annabelle was going to proposition the graduate fellow she had a crush on for ages and, since they were both smart and capable, they’d see the merits in working out a little sexual tension.
Wrong.
Upon propositioning Charles, Annie promptly gets shut down. Which I found jarring and disheartening, but it works. For one, the writing captures exactly the type of feelings you’d get if you were the one to get rejected and Emily does a great job making you feel what Annie feels. It also dispels the myth of teacher/student relationships in romance. It’s refreshing to see Charles realize that while he’d love to have sex with Annie, nothing can happen while she’s a student. He recognizes there’s a power differential between them and even though a relationship with him would be consensual, there’s still too much potential for Annie to feel that she’s on the losing end of the arrangement.
So they agree to wait until Annie graduates (or is technically no longer a student) and then they’ll tend to all of their sexual needs.
After this happens, it turns into a weekend-long sex fest and while I don’t mind a lot of sex in a book, I found the slow explorations to be…tiring. Charles sets a very deliberate and careful pace with their sexual progress because with Annie being a virgin, he wants to make sure they go “around all the bases.” He also admits that he wants to make the experience so good for her that he becomes the bar to which she compares future partners.
I love how earnest and honest Annie is. She’s in touch with her emotions, even if they may be dorky or inconvenient or a little naive. She feels them fully. And I think that’s in part due to the way the book is written. It’s technically first person, but it felt more like I was Annie’s best friend and she was recounting all these details, rather than feeling like I was temporarily inside her head, as with most first person POVs.
But both Annie and Charles’ intelligence made me feel kind of dumb at times. When Annie is struggling with her research and Charles has her look up “reptilian vagus,” and it’s further explained in the text, I had to read the description several times before I understood the implications of the term. The depth of the science stuff made reading the romance feel like work and then I’d get irritated at myself BECAUSE LEARNING NEW THINGS IS NEVER WORK, AMANDA.
Once Annie and Charles get going physically, though, my earlier complaint of it not being sex-filled right out of the gate quickly disappeared. The exploration of sex or rather…sexploration was fun and smart and sexy and kinky. And it’s definitely a romance that shows how sex can be awkward at times, and that above all, you’re supposed to have a good time doing it. It doesn’t always have to be confessions of love, where you’re left misty-eyed and dumbfounded by the realization that this is your true wuv. It felt real to me.
That being said, there’s a bit of a tonal shift halfway-ish through the book. Annie and Charles both go into this friends-with-benefits scenario knowing that it’s only temporary. And as romance readers, we all know how that goes. But the book starts out a little goofy and light-hearted. There’s a lightness to it even as Annie is dealing with adult decisions like deciding her future and contemplating sexual relationships.
Then Charles is revealed to have a very dark, traumatic past. It just felt like such a separation from the Charles we saw at the beginning of the book and I keep fighting with myself on whether I liked that part of his characterization. Plenty of people carry around trauma and have normal lives. They’re fully-functioning adults. So why did it seem so far-fetched to me as a reader? I’m still struggling with this response. Maybe because it hits so close to home and as a romance reader, I’m used to more fantasy and less reality in my reading experiences? I DON’T KNOW!
There is a cliffhanger. A big one. But (and I know it’s not an HEA) I feel like it still could be a realistic ending to Annie and Charles relationship.
This was difficult for me to read, but it’s an important reminder to me that sometimes things don’t work out, and serve as lessons for future relationships. In this case, the romance will be strengthened in the next book and things (I hope) will work out between Charles and Annie. But the reminder was a powerful one for me: we all have people who touch our lives, especially relationship-wise. They may not be good for us in the long run or in their current state in life, but that doesn’t negate the things they’ve taught us or the memories we shared. And while separation is painful at first, it hopefully becomes something we can look on fondly or at the very least, use as a baseline to make future decisions (i.e. maybe don’t date this type of guy again?).
I would recommend this book, honestly. The smart characters and Annie’s earnestness as a heroine are so refreshing, despite the emotional shift in the narrative. I’m glad I read it and I’m going to scramble for the continuation because I want to know what Emily Foster will do with these characters. What tropes will she use? Which ones will she tweak? What new things will I learn? And while I struggled with various aspects of How Not to Fall, I think it’s always a good sign when I still want to know what an author is going to do next.
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Thanks!
I’ve had this on my wishlist since that excellent podcast, but after reading this review I realise the book is probably not for me despite your recommendation. Ah, well.
@Aislinn: At the very least, you could always give a library copy a try, if you’re on the fence!
I loved this book and pre-ordered the next. For whatever reason the sex scenes really did it for me to the point where I would not feel comfortable reading it in public.
I read this and really loved it despite the angst at a time when I really need a HEA. I’m going to trust the author that it’s on its way.
I loved seeing the echoes of Twilight and 50 Shades in the text, written in a way that I enjoyed and could ethically get behind. Because I read both of the first books in those series and felt so conflicted about them.
Hmmm I also added this book to my wishlist after the podcast, and yet … now … no. I am greatly in need of angst-free leisure reading, with HEAs, at present. And I’m really not interested in kink. *Especially* kink with an “I will teach you about your body” thing. I hate that. So thanks for the frank review.
I’m glad she decided to try her hand at writing romance because what she included and omitted was quite telling. There was a lot of science talk, some of which went over my head but it was unique enough, I didn’t mind. I thought it was an interesting coming of age tale, while also exploring how relationships succeed and fail and what our part is in all that. I had a hard time putting it down and it made me feel so many different emotions, especially because it didn’t end on a happy note. I am DYING to know what happens next.
Read it in one sitting. I hated 50 shades SO much, it was great to see lots of the hot topics handled in a better way. Wishing some of this would be required teen reading/sex education.
It’s my day off, so I had the luxury of buying and reading this book today after reading your review. I understand why it might not be for everyone, but I really, really enjoyed it. I especially love when books that are erotic and kinky are also explicit about consent and respect. I would recommend it!
I read this on while on vacation. I was totally into the book until the 65% mark on my Kindle- I know because the tonal shift (and characterization) was SO BIG that it kicked me right out of my beach read happy place. The review is spot on that it goes from fun, quirky, sexy contemporary to a trope filled angst fest. With a cliffhanger ending. Nope.
Um… Is the cover a screen grab from a Liv Tyler movie? Like Jersey Girl, maybe? Because I swear I’ve seen that shot with her in the red polka dot dress somewhere.
Please someone else back me up on this so I can not feel crazy!
I really enjoyed this book and after reading a little bit about the author, I realized what I really liked about it. It’s a smart book that is *smart* about the sex. She doesn’t shy away from using anatomically correct terms for body parts. In fact, she’s dog it on purpose! She also doesn’t shy away from being realistic about how women have orgasms. It helps that I also really enjoyed Charles (issues and all) and the way he was so honest with Annie (and thus, the reader). Great book. Can’t wait for the second one.
I loved every minute of it (including the “round the bases” moments, since their age difference made that make sense for me. And I definitely didn’t feel it was a “let me teach you about your body” thing.
This couple joined my list of favorites, and I think it was about the consent and the smart choices and discussions and honesty between them. While there was angst, it was never handled in a way that made me roll my eyes. And I could definitely see the “lighter” Charles easily having a darker past that kept him from deeper emotions. I almost cried that there was a cliffhanger (and would be FURIOUS if there was no HEA coming), but I just… This book was amazing. Please read it.
I feel like a curmudgeon. I couldn’t even read the first chapter of this book. It is a first-person! I HATE, literally despise, first person romances in 99% of the cases. The only exceptions I’ve enjoyed are Alyssa Cole and the great Cara McKenna. In every other instance it is lazy storytelling that substitutes subjective character inner-dialogue for pacing, story, and character development. I hated that because I seem like the audience for this book. I love smart romance novels. I love science and academics in romance novels. I love to snark about how wrong people get it and I love to read a discipline through a trade genre. Love, love, love. Again, Alyssa Cole is great at that.
But this didn’t work. The first pages were like Sweet Valley High level dialogue except worst. SVH actually rules but you know what i mean. I’m old now. Anyway, sorry, couldn’t do it and I feel really guilt about that.
Not to revive the dead, but I just finally picked up this book (had it for months) and finished it in one sitting. While I really enjoyed it, as time passes I find myself more and more befuddled by the fact that a *psychiatrist* who is supposed to be *super-smart* believes himself to be somehow irreparably emotionally broken. And then justifies/explains it with some pretty profound misinterpretations of attachment research?? Psychiatry pretty much relies on the premise that even serious emotional problems stemming from all kinds of trauma can be, at the very least, mitigated. In my experience people who work in mental health professions are really into doing therapy themselves, for fairly obvious reasons. That just didn’t totally track for me. Will probably still read the sequel, though.