Book Review: A Step Toward Falling by Cammie McGovern

---

A Step Toward Falling
Author: Cammie McGovern
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary
Released: October 6th 2015
Review Source: HarperTeen | ReadingTeen

Cammie McGovern follows up her breakout young adult debut, Say What You Will, with this powerful and unforgettable novel about learning from your mistakes, and learning to forgive. Told in alternating points of view, A Step Toward Falling is a poignant, hopeful, and altogether stunning work that will appeal to fans of Jennifer Nevin, Robyn Schneider, and Jandy Nelson.

Emily has always been the kind of girl who tries to do the right thing—until one night when she does the worst thing possible. She sees Belinda, a classmate with developmental disabilities, being attacked. Inexplicably, she does nothing at all.

Belinda, however, manages to save herself. When their high school finds out what happened, Emily and Lucas, a football player who was also there that night, are required to perform community service at a center for disabled people. Soon, Lucas and Emily begin to feel like maybe they're starting to make a real difference. Like they would be able to do the right thing if they could do that night all over again. But can they do anything that will actually help the one person they hurt the most?

Say What You Will is an amazing story everyone should check out! Seriously, go read it.

The fact that I loved Cammie’s first book, I should love this book. With this said, it breaks my heart to say I did not, at all, enjoy A Step Toward Falling. The more I read, the less this book made sense to me. Knowing that I hate leaving books unfinished, I made myself finish this book. But the more I read, the more I kept thinking, what the heck?! The plot, the characters, the story itself just seems off. This comes from a girl that LOVES sad stories. I’d shed tears for simple gestures. Yeah, I know, I am a sucker. However, this story just drove me nuts.

The story switches from point of views, between Belinda and Emily. Usually, I can follow but with A Step Toward Falling it was hard to keep track. The story begins at the time Emily and Lucas start their community service. We learn from the start they did something terrible and are forced to help out. As the story goes on, things are said, memories are shared and some unethical actions are done.

Although the story covers serious elements, the way is told is just hard to keep up. The monologue is dull and some actions towards some characters are very harsh. It was hard to read this story. Not because of the seriousness but the writing was hard to comprehend. Between the writing style and the characters, I wouldn’t recommend this story.

Thank you, Andye for the copy.