Autumn Falls // but when does she rise above superficiality

I bought this book solely because the cover is embossed on the glittery parts and was so pretty.

Autumn FallsAutumn Falls by Bella Thorne, Elise Allen
Series: Autumn Falls #1
Published by Delacorte Press on 11 November, 2014
Genre: #nothanks, Contemporary, Fantasy, Fiction, Paranormal, Romance
# pages: 217
Source: Dollar Tree
Goodreads
Rating: ★★★

With her fiery red hair, new-girl outsider status, and tendency to be a total klutz, Autumn Falls definitely isn’t flying below the radar at Aventura High. Luckily, she makes some genuine friends who take her under their wing. But she also manages to get on the wrong side of the school’s queen bee, and then finds out the guy she’s started to like, funny and sweet Sean, hangs with the mean crowd. Now her rep and her potential love life are at stake.

It’s weird, re: the protagonist.

I can’t help wondering about the fictionalized versions of myself I’ve created and whether they seem weird to others — Liv, for one — but I like to think I don’t make them perfect, and give them some flaws and add insecurities. I don’t want them to have perfect personalities.

One of my issues with Bella Thorne’s roles is that she’s always of the mean persona, or she plays a girl who is of the “poor me” pity party variety, and I’m not a fan of those personality types. Autumn Falls resembles Bella Thorne in the ways of the roles she’s usually associated with and, from what I gathered, the looks, so it felt very…unreliable? Unreliable narrators aren’t my Thing (apparently everyone has a “Thing”; Idunno, teens these days, man).

I disliked her.

I kept wanting her to evolve the way characters should across a book, but she remained static.

Who wrote it?

I know, I know: ghostwriting is a thing. But, like, dude: this girl has teen fans, so when I got the book, I was all, “Woah! What a great role model!” and when I learned more about the authoring process, I was disappointed. I’m not a fan of the whole idea of publishing books under celebrities’ names when they were ghostwritten JUST because CELEBRITIES.

Idunno. It makes me feel indifferent. I read some of the other reviews for this book, and they said she probably got help because of her dyslexia (a huge theme in the book), but I wish there was more transparency there, because whilst I’m not a fan of her, I did run into fans of hers in the reviews who were disappointed and let down because she may not have personally written it.

It’s just a weird feeling. 😕

Other stuff

This had potential to be grand, but there are flaws in the writing (needs better editing) and a lack of detailing on the main plot: a magic journal? I’ve watched Devil’s Diary, if that tells you anything about how my mind filled in the holes…

I don’t know if I’ll read the sequel; there are so many other books I want to read first. 😅 I think it’d be a better book for a younger sister. 😊

And regardless of my thoughts about it, Autumn Falls was an easy, quick read.

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Comments on this post

That cover is super cute, especially with the embossed parts. I love when book covers have nice details like that.

I’ll be honest though I had never even heard of Bella Thorne before reading this review, but I agree that celebrities selling books with ghost writers feels a little disingenuous. Not to rip on ghost writers, I respect it as a career and have been hired to do a little ghost writing for blogs in the past, but when I read I typically want to support authors that I know are writing professionally for themselves. 🙂

Yes, agreed—on all accounts!