YA review: No Place to Fall by Jaye Robin Brown

Title: No Place to Fall
Author: Jaye Robin Brown
Series: N/A
Acquired: Bought
Genre: Young Adult
Publisher: Harper Teen
Release date: 9th December 2014

People think that Amber Vaughn is a good girl. What they don't know is that she spends her summer evenings being someone else completely. She's not the church going choir singer. She's not sweet and innocent. She has dreams bigger than the small town she grew up in. 

Just when Amber thinks she may have the chance of getting out and making something of herself, her secrets spiral out of control and could ruin everything. 

Review
If I hadn't have been in Foyles one day, I would have never known about this book, let alone pick it up to buy it. Honestly, the cover is what got me but this is a debut novel and I didn't really know what to expect. 

Protagonist Amber is supposedly a good, church going girl who sings in the choir and this is how the synopsis (the official one, not the one above) portrays her. However, right at the beginning of the book we learn that she is spending the evenings during summer break at a local cabin where hikers stay and she ends up hooking up with quite a few of them. This obviously instantly ruins the idea of her being the girl she's made out to be. That bugged me. 

It's not that Amber wasn't likeable though, because she was in a weird way. This book sees her do a lot of pretty silly things and she doesn't think anything through at all. Amber is one of those characters who you really want to hit with a 'get real' stick and make her realise that there's a lot going on around her that she's not even thinking about. I wanted her to sort herself out, to grow a bit more but unfortunately there isn't as much character development as there could be. I really liked Amber's passion for music which ran throughout the story. While she was a bit messed up over a number of things, music was the one thing that stayed clear and that was a nice touch. 

In regards to the plot, No Place to Fall is a bit all over the place. There's so much going on from stealing, cheating and drugs that I didn't really know whether I was coming or going. I do like some twists and turns in a book but this just had too much going on. Characters got lost in multiple plot lines and were never able to reach their full potential. Separate plot lines lacked excitement because they weren't given enough time. It's a shame really because this could have been a really great book. 

I really liked some of the secondary characters even if they were sort of forgotten about at times. Just like the plot, there were too many characters and if there had been a couple less, the others would have been given more time to shine. There were also quite a few stereotypes thrown in like it was for good measure which was a bit of a shame as it was unnecessary. 

Although I haven't written a review full of really nice things about this book, I did like it in a strange kind of way. No Place to Fall is a very easy read and shows potential from the author. I would definitely give this author another try.