Brooke's dream was to be a competitive ice skater. She practices whenever possible and she has been working at an ice rink so she doesn't have to pay for ice time. Until the day everything changes. Brooke's brother Jason has been convicted of killing his best friend Calvin and now Jason is in prison.
After that, everything changes for Brooke and her family. Her friends want nothing to do with her and it is the same for the other family members. Brooke's only friend is Maggie, and she knows nothing about the murder since she and her mother have just moved here.
Then things change again... While driving, Brooke sees someone on the side of the road. It is raining out so she stops to see if she can help. It ends up being Heath, Calvin's brother, and both of them are unsure how to act around one another. They keep running into each other and start to form a friendship against all odds. Heath agrees to help her with her lifts for the ice skating tryouts. At first, they hardly speak to each other. Now they are talking about what happened between their brothers and how both of them feel completely alone. Both know that both families would have a fit if they knew that these two were now friends.
Abigail Johnson's EVEN IF I FALL is, at times, very hard to read. Not because it is not good, more because of the sorrow that both of these young adults are going through. Johnson shows how people will judge an entire family on something one of them does. EVEN IF I FALL really took me by surprise. This story shows how no matter how you might feel about someone at first, maybe once you get to know them you will change.
Brooke and Heath should never have become friends,
let alone fallen in love
A year ago, Brooke Covington lost everything when her
beloved older brother, Jason, confessed to the murder of his
best friend, Calvin. Brooke and her family became social
pariahs, broken and unable to console one another. Brookeβs
only solace remains the ice-skating rink where she works,
but she no longer lets herself dream about a future skating
professionally.
When Brooke encounters Calvinβs younger brother, Heath, on
the side of the road and offers him a ride, everything
changes. She needs someone to talk toβ¦and so does Heath. No
one else understands what itβs like. Her brother, alive but
gone; his brother, dead but everywhere. Soon, theyβre
meeting in secret, despite knowing that both families would
be horrified if they found out. In the place of his anger
and her guilt, something frighteningly tender begins to
develop, drawing them ever closer together.
But when a new secret comes out about the murder, Brooke has
to choose whose pain sheβs willing to live withβher familyβs
or Heathβs. Because she canβt heal one without hurting the
other.
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