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.