Buy Freefall
Special $8.23 (Regular price: $8.99)
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Format: Paperback
Reviewer: Melissa on October 13, 2010
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
When life as you know it seems to crumble, how do you get back to your comfort zone? Seth McCoy was the last person to see Isaac and the first one to find his body the next day. It had been a night like any other, a night with a party, a night where Isaac had drank too much and passed out. But everything was different because Isaac was never waking up again and Seth blamed himself for all of it. When torn between getting his life on track…or losing himself completely, Seth meets Rosetta, a girl who is so beautiful and so different from anything he’s known. However, Rosetta has secrets hidden too, and Seth realizes that he isn’t the only person who needs to be saved.
I haven’t been reading as many contemporary YA novels lately as usual, but I’m really glad that I picked up Mindi Scott‘s debut novel Freefall, and I think that you will be, too. Why? Well, not only is Seth a believable, and well-rounded main character, but also Scott writes in a way that made me think about things and in ways that I never would have imagined before. What is it like to be the best friend of someone who dies without ever making it passed high school? What is it like when your best friend is the poor, troubled teen rather than the rich girl who’s life is cut short in a tragic and unexpected way? What is it like when people expect the same thing to happen to you? How come someone who is labeled a bad boy will always seem that way to the people in a small town, while a girl who just moves there can have a fresh start?
Through Seth, Scott explores tough questions early on, but she also puts him in situations that help him realize he’s not alone, that others can and do empathize with him. Maybe, like Seth, readers don’t want to talk to the guidance counselor or their mother. Like them, Seth isn’t ready to divulge his secret thoughts, that his actions or inaction were the reason tragedy struck, but at some point, he does feel ready. At some point, his connection with Rosetta makes him feel the best he’s felt since Isaac’s death. The connection that develops between Rosetta and Seth seems natural and cute. It’s one part of the storyline that is sure to connect eager teen readers with the narrative and will make the young-at-heart readers of YA fiction out there remember what it was like to be 17 and in love again.
Finally, while Seth takes Interpersonal Communication, or IC, merely to get an easy credit to help push up his GPA (doesn’t everyone do that at one point in high school?), there is a lot more to it than that. The lessons he learns help him bridge (or at least attempt to bridge) a number of conflicts that come up along the way between himself and his band, Kendall, Rosetta, Vicki, and plenty of other characters along the way. It also gives him the confidence to grow in positive ways over the course of the novel. While he makes mistakes throughout the novel, just like we all do, Seth becomes someone that teen readers can look up to, which is pretty cool, and might even give some female readers a bit of a crush, or so I’ve heard from other girls on the Twittersphere. 
All teens stumble along the way, whether they’re the obviously troubled teens or the ones who seem to have everything under control. Read Scott’s Freefall and find out how close to the edge one can actually get.
Buy Freefall today!
Melissa has always been a voracious reader of fiction and has an M.A. in English Literature to prove it. Like many other adults, she got caught up in the young adult crossover fiction phenomenon. Now, one of her great joys comes from sharing her love of YA lit on this popular review site. Come with expectations of intellect, magic, and honest reviews, and you won’t be disappointed.
