Balzer + Bray Press | February 2016 | 368 pages
As the husband of a children’s librarian, I have been a reader of young adult (YA) novels for awhile now. To me, most YA plots I’ve encountered over the years have become pretty repetitive.
There’s a protagonist (these days often female, but not always) who, according to my wife, “cries and cries some more and then you cry, too.” There is even a term for this kind of tale—the “problem novel”—which usually deals with an adolescent’s first confrontation with a social or personal problem. The term was first used in the 1960s with The Outsiders, but more recent examples include Go Ask Alice (1971), The Buffalo Tree (1997) and Wonder(2012).
I’m being a little mean here because this is a vast generalization; there a lot of wonderful YA novels out there which have nothing to with social or personal problems. I’m not averse to problem novels because they do provide adolescents some wonderfully identifiable perspectives, but I’ve read so many of them over the years that I’m a bit leery at this point. I like something fresh when it comes to my YA fiction.
Emily Hainsworth’s Take the Fall comes as a nice surprise. At first glance, Hainsworth’s thriller is a breezy beach read; the plot revolves around a murder mystery which has a rural New York town in the grips of a panic.
In the opening pages, Sonia and her best friend, Gretchen, two high school seniors, are coming home from a party. Sonia drops Gretchen off at home and is then pursued by an unknown attacker, barely escaping in the process. She awakens the next day to find Gretchen wasn’t quite so lucky and was found dead at the base of the town waterfall. Who killed Gretchen and why? So far this sounds like your typical potboiler, right?
What surprised me about Take the Fall was that it not only rises above the standard YA tropes, but also becomes an exciting, thrilling read that people of all ages would enjoy. Hainsworth’s prose propels the plot forward with juicy character development that keeps you guessing as to who the killer might be. Is it Marcus, Gretchen’s moody, dark ex-boyfriend that Sonia happens to have a crush on? Kirsten, Gretchen’s sister, who was considered beneath contempt by her older sibling? Or was it a random outsider who ventured into the close-knit community of Hidden Falls? It turns out that Gretchen had no shortage of enemies, which levels the playing field even more in terms of who the killer might be.
I honestly thought I knew who the killer was several times throughout the novel, but Hainsworth kept me guessing all of the way until the well-thought-out finale. What I think I enjoyed the most about Take the Fall (don’t worry, I’m not giving anything away here) is the denouement. It not only surprises but also contains a healthy dose of authenticity that is frequently absent from whodunits like this.
There are repercussions from every action we take, whether we like it or not. Hainsworth does a nice job of resisting the “let’s tie everything up into a nice, neat little ball and put a ribbon on it” plot.
Take the Fall is the type of read that tweens and teens will enjoy, but it’s a read their parents will be engrossed with as well.
