Once Upon a Twilight!: Blog Tour: Free To Fall | Lauren Miller | Review

Welcome to our stop on the Free To Fall tour for Lauren Miller. This tour is hosted by Book Nerd Tours.

Free To Fall
Author: Lauren Miller
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Dystopian
Released: May 13, 2014
Review Source: Blog Tour | HarperTeen

What if there was an app that told you what song to listen to, what coffee to order, who to date, even what to do with your life—an app that could ensure your complete and utter happiness? What if you never had to fail or make a wrong choice?

What if you never had to fall?

Fast-forward to a time when Apple and Google have been replaced by Gnosis, a monolith corporation that has developed the most life-changing technology to ever hit the market: Lux, an app that flawlessly optimizes decision making for the best personal results. Just like everyone else, sixteen-year-old Rory Vaughn knows the key to a happy, healthy life is following what Lux recommends. When she’s accepted to the elite boarding school Theden Academy, her future happiness seems all the more assured. But once on campus, something feels wrong beneath the polished surface of her prestigious dream school. Then she meets North, a handsome townie who doesn’t use Lux, and begins to fall for him and his outsider way of life. Soon, Rory is going against Lux’s recommendations, listening instead to the inner voice that everyone has been taught to ignore — a choice that leads her to uncover a truth neither she nor the world ever saw coming.

"Lux, what should I wear today?"
"Lux, should I eat a snack?"
"Lux, should I go back ten steps to retrieve my umbrella?"
Can you picture yourself, right now, using Siri as a guide-to-life? In Free To Fall the technology is so advanced that "Lux" basically controls your every move. Lauren Miller is right on track with this dystopian novel. BRAVO. If any dystopian is believable, it is most definitely this one. Technology seems to be headed in crazy ways and people are more and more engrossed into playing with their cell phones constantly. In the Free To Fall world, your inner voice and intuition have been eliminated. Following your gut means you'll make the wrong choice. Everything needs to be logical, and there is technology to help you make the right choices, Lux.

Aurora, or Rory, trusts Lux for everything. And, I mean everything. She gets accepted into Theden Academy, a prestigious school that is basically a golden ticket to security in her career choice and life. But, something is off and then she meets North. North doesn't use Lux. She begins to fall.

I LOVED Free To Fall. Easy 5 tree rating! I loved Rory's character. She was incredibly fascinating to me. And North, swoon-worthy North, *sighs* yeah, he's pretty dreamy. I enjoyed following their story. There were twists and turns at, what felt like, every page. Books that keep you guessing, and keep you shocked when you can't predict what will happen, are rare to come by. But, Free To Fall is one of those books and a true gem. I kind of, REALLY need to read this book again because I loved it so much. Pick up your copy now because Free To Fall is easily one of the greatest books of 2014!

I grew up in Atlanta. I went to college at Yale and law school at Berkeley, then I got married and moved to Southern California to practice law.

I liked it. But after about a year, I got the itch to be doing something more creative. The itch got stronger. I found myself typing out random bits of dialogue on my Blackberry (remember those?) and pitching story ideas to my co-workers. One of those ideas became a script for a TV pilot. When it didn’t sell, I wrote another one and another one. Soon, I was ducking out of work to go to pitch meetings at studios and networks. It felt like I was getting somewhere.

Then I got pregnant. Unexpectedly. This freaked me out. Not because I didn’t want kids (I did), but because I was afraid (ok, convinced) that motherhood would zap my creative potential.

To prove myself wrong, I resolved to write a novel in the first 100 days of my child’s life and blog about it, an experiment I called “embracing the detour” (if you’re looking for an embrace the detour fridge magnet, I’m your girl. If you’re looking for old embrace the detour blog posts, click HERE). At the time, it seemed like a brilliant idea. Looking back, it makes me laugh at the childless version of me.

Then again, she’s the reason the current version of me ended up with a two-book deal at HarperTeen. And my very first script sale (but that’s a whole other story).

Thanks to to Kristyn Keene at ICM and Sarah Landis at HarperTeen, my debut novel, Parallel, hit bookstores on May 14th. My second novel, Free to Fall, will be out next Spring.