Book Review: DON'T FALL by Rachel Schieffelbein

Title: Don't Fall
Author: Rachel Schieffelbein

Category/Genre: Young Adult Romance
My Star Rating: 4/5
 
Goodreads Blurb: 
In which a teenage girl endures the over-protective love of her adoptive mother until she falls for a boy who has her wanting to spread her wings, pitched as a contemporary retelling of Rapunzel.

Seventeen-year-old Anya leads a very secluded life in a house on the edge of town with her adopted mother. She doesn't go to school, but instead has a private tutor. Her over-protective mom keeps her so sheltered that she doesn't even have a best friend.

But Anya doesn't seem to mind. She has her books, her photography, and her daydreams, and would do anything to please her mom. Until one day at the library, the only place she's allowed to go, she takes a picture of a beautiful boy.

Before long she's lying to her mom, and sneaking out late at night to meet Zander. But Zander wants more than a secret romance. If Anya wants to be with the boy of her dreams, she will have to risk her relationship with the only other person she's ever cared about.

 


My Review: 

This was one of those rare books that I didn't receive free for a review---one that I came across by pure chance and was drawn to it.  I love fairytale retellings, and I love Rapunzel.  Somehow, this is the first modern retelling of Rapunzel that I've come across.  I'm SO glad I did.

This was a sweet romance, and Anya is the perfect heroine for it.  She is innocent but not naive, and loveable but not with out flaws.  Zander was a delightfully patient gentleman, who did well to coax Anya out of her shell with out pushing too hard.  Anya's mother was (for lack a better term) a villain that you just couldn't bring yourself to hate. 

I do wish we had ventured a little deeper into the darkness that clouded Anya's mother.  It was told why she was so over-protective, but very briefly.

A wonderful story about loving too much, holding too tightly, and protecting far too fiercely...but most of all, this was a story of a young girl discovering that it isn't selfish to want your own happiness--a lesson I fear far too few teenage girls hear.