The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe

This year is going to be different. This year, Kaelyn promises herself that she’s going to talk to people at school and make more friends. Then everything will be better, and she’ll stop missing her best friend Leo as much. And Kaelyn’s right: this year is going to be a lot different—only, not in the way that she thinks.  Instead, people start getting sick. The symptoms are strange and unlike those of anything doctors have really seen before, with uncontrollable itching, sneezing, and coughing; a breakdown of social inhibitions; and paranoid hallucinations. No one really knows what to do, not the parents or the doctors or the government, but with the deadly virus spreading father every day, something has to be done. With her island home locked down on quarantine and people close to her getting sicker every day, Kaelyn has almost given up on everything. Is there an end to this nightmare? Kaelyn doesn’t know, but she can’t give up hope—because that’s all she has left.

The Way We Fall is an absolutely chilling look at the reverberating effects of a deadly virus in a small, enclosed community. For me, Crewe’s story is so scary and horrifying because the real villain is invisible: it’s a virus; I can’t think of anything more frightening than watching your home and world fall apart because of something you can’t see or even effectively protect yourself from. I was kept on the edge of my seat the entire time I was reading this book because Crewe crafts this world so well. The virus itself and its symptoms are entirely believable and the degeneration of the community in which Kaelyn lives is so scarily plausible. Even when comparing the initial state and the ending circumstances of Kaelyn’s home, their vast differences are easy to understand because Crewe makes the worsening transitions so smooth. It’s also interesting to watch the changes that Kaelyn undergoes as she’s forced to grapple with unfamiliar situations and adapt to new roles, but I found that I cared less about her than I did about the overall situation on the island. I also felt that the story cut off in an odd place; either Crewe could have shortened it to leave more of a cliffhanger, which would have been acceptable considering The Way We Fall is the first in a new series, or she should have added a little more onto the ending. However, I am optimistic that character development will improve in books to come, and I am eager to see how Kaelyn’s story and life on the island will continue.

The Way We Fall will be enjoyed by fans of Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer, Wither by Lauren DeStefano, Birthmarked by Caragh M. O’Brien, and Dark Parties by Sara Grant.

Rating: 4.5

Review copy from NetGalley