Tori's Review: Free Falling by Kirsty Moseley

Free Falling by Kirsty Moseley
Series: None
Genre: Romance, New Adult, Young Adult
Rating: ★★★
Pages: 281
Published by Smashwords on May 15, 2013
Date Read: September 3, 2013
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They say that your school years are supposed to be the best years of your life, and that you should make the most of them because you’ll miss them when you’re all grown up. Up until Maisie Preston’s senior year, she would have totally agreed with that statement. Life was great, she had everything going for her, excellent grades, great parents, an annoying yet caring twin brother, and an impossibly sweet boyfriend.
Everything was perfect - that is until the arrival of Zach Anderson. A misfit delinquent that seemed to bring with him a lot of bad karma. Is it just a coincidence that his arrival marks a significant change in Maisie’s life? Up until senior year, life was perfect, but things seem to be going downhill fast.
This is a companion novel for ‘Always You’ — though this novel stands alone so there is no need to read Always You first.

Parental Review: 

Language: Moderate

Sexual Content: Moderate to heavy

Violence: Mild (a fist fight here and there, nothing serious)

Other: Stalking; breaking and entering; murder (not described, just occurring);

Why, Maisie, why. You are so fucking stupid. Let me just get this out of the way and tell you that this isn't your typical nerd and jock love story. No this is your typical nerd and jock story with a twist. The beginning and the characters are so cliche though and that's why this is rated three stars and not four. (I've decided to give five stars a lot more sparingly from now on.)

Here's a story for you. It's about a girl who used to read over-romanticized stories on this little writing website called Wattpad. She found this really cliche story that involved a love square. Then, several months later the author stopped writing it and posting because, hey, she was getting her story published! Long story short, this girl reads the published story to discover that one of the guys from the love square is missing. Gone. Forever dead.

That's not even what pissed me off about this book. What pissed me off was the fact that this book was "edited" and "polished" for the publishing world and yet everything was still so damn predictable. I hate to be so rude about this, so I'll tone it down a bit but, I mean, when I can guess the ending after one event, I'm pretty sure that's bad.

Spoiler! Highlight black text to view. I knew it was Luke all along. Sure, I had my doubts once they arrested Zach but once they said why they arrested Zach I was calling bullshit. Zach just wasn't the type to do that, you know? I especially knew it was Luke when he created an alibi for Maisie when Sandy was killed. There was something fishy about that. He was way too paranoid for it to have not been him. Plus, after a lot of mystery books and TV shows (I'm lame, I know), I've learned to never trust anybody. I also learned to keep your friends lose and your enemies closer. But I think Maisie kept her enemies just a little too close this time...

But still. I wish the plot wasn't so simple and that the characters weren't so stereotypical. Don't get me wrong, I fell in love with Zach, but he wasn't different than every other bad boy that I've read about. Bad boys always have motorcycles that the girls don't want to ride because they're "afraid". Like, bitch, no. It's a motorcycle, and you get to hug his abs for about ten to twenty minutes. Just...enjoy it. But, no. The girls are always like "omg, no, it's a bike, I might just die". Okay if you were going to die on that "death machine", as you like to call it, I'm pretty much the guy would've died a while ago. He knows how to drive his bike. Have yee little faith. But then bad boys always have a bad background/family, you know? Zach was abandoned by his mom and his uncle (with whom he is living) doesn't like him.

I'm sorry, but no. I've heard this sob story more than ten times, so I lack sympathy for the character.

Don't get me wrong! I loved Zach. I just didn't "feel" for him. I actually felt for Zach's aunt more for Zach himself. That's another issue. I didn't feel for any of these characters. Shit happens; you get over it. Everything in this book happens because something before happened to that particular character--basically, the snowball effect. In theory, if Unsaid Character A just got over what Unsaid Character B did and moved on, then maybe--just maybe--nobody would've gotten hurt in the end.

But no. It's never that easy, is it?

And the ending. Like what the actual fuck? Maisie was in the drowning car, struggling to get free, talking about the car seat belt restraining her and killing her, when she could've unsnapped the seat belt the entire time? I'm not buying it. Just no. She would've saved herself a lot of grief if she had just moved her hand to unbuckle her seat belt like a normal person. No need to freak the fuck out when you have two hands and about three minutes of air left. You're not dying yet. I just can't. I got so angry with Maisie while reading that part (the ending). 

I did happen to like was Zach and his relationship with Maisie. Even though he likes her (it's so blatantly obvious) he never gets jealous of Luke. My only problem was when him and Maisie first met, he was always making these little cliche remarks like "oh, it's his loss" and "he's missing out". Just little one liners that were extremely cliche and that are in just about every YA novel these days.