After awkward teen Meredith witnesses the kidnapping of cruel, popular Lisa Bellow, both she , her family and her entire community must deal with the aftermath.

This book is an interesting exploration of adolescence and PTSD. Meredith is profoundly affected by the robbery and Lisa's disappearance. She not only has to confront the violence of the robbery and kidnapping, but her conflicted feelings about Lisa, who had been mean to her in the past. She also finds herself thrust into a new social sphere as Lisa's friends need answers about her disappearance.

The book deals with Meredith and her mother, Claire. Both perspectives are very realistic. The author really nails adolescence and middle age in a very real way. I have a lot in common with 13 year old Meredith, she comes across as a real person, not a generic teen. Claire also has a lot of her own issues, that seem very true to life. She's not a goody two shoes perfect mom. She was a very interesting character.

This book's strengths are the characters and their relationships. The plot gets a little convoluted about halfway through, but I was satisfied with the overall explanation and ending.

Decent and well thought out focusing on not neccesarily the real victim but still a victim of sorts. Refreshing and original.

I did enjoy this book, but even after finishing it, struggled with how it was presented by the publisher, and how it read.
This book might seem to be about two girls who are abducted. It might seem to be a "thriller" or "suspenseful" but it's really not. Yes, there is an abduction, but it's really about relationships, and a family who is falling apart trying to get through a traumatic event, even two events.
The wounded mind, the tricks it plays not only on the victim, but with us, the readers, is tragic.
Overall I thought the book good, the writing well done, with a lot of it seeming to be dialogue. It was a quick read, and held my attention.

Lastly I will say what definitely annoyed me about this story, and I just couldn't get my head around was that the whole world these children lived in. Middle school? I'm certainly out of the loop if this is how middle school girls behave and experience their lives.

Thanks to Simon & Schuster who provided me an e-copy of this book prior to publication via NetGalley for an honest review.

I'm a little disappointed in this book. I guess I went in thinking it was going to be one thing and got something else.
It was just okay, not outstanding. I couldn't really feel anything for any of the characters. The robbery was under whelming as was the kidnapping. It seems like the Oliver family was living under a dark cloud. Mark and Evan where the only two non Eyeore type people. I realize that Meredith suffered a trauma, but It just wasn't presented as very traumatic.
In the end it was luke warm to me.

I will still recommend this book to patrons but I found the tone of this book to be awfully whiny and irritating making it a tedious read.

This will go live on my blog on March 10. Kellyvision.wordpress.com

Meredith and her nemesis, Lisa Bellow, are both at a Wawa-style convenience store when it's robbed. The armed robber takes Lisa with him, leaving Meredith behind.

This is such an interesting book but first a caveat: there is no resolution. We don't know what happened to Lisa. And we don't know for sure that Meredith will ever be OK again.

I loved this book. I think it'd be easy for other people to not love it (lack of resolution; weird aspects of the plot) but if you're comfortable with ambiguity, this is totally the book for you.

Recommended.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I lived this book. Kept me up all night reading. Highly recommended!

This book is about an abduction and kidnapping of a teenage girl while in the presence of another teenage girl who is left behind and the downward spiral of the left behind girls family. The author did a marvelous job of enabling the family to cope with the guilt of being the "safe ones" while also being able to work through the many confused and angry feelings. It is a powerful story that involves such a mixed bag of emotions from everyone. It truly shows that the support of family and the resilience of the human spirit is a strong and wonderful thing.

When Meredith Oliver is the lucky girl left behind after a robber abducts her eighth grade classmate Lisa Bellow, she is not the only one traumatized. The Fall of Lisa Bellow by Susan Perabo, looks at the aftereffects of trauma on Meredith and her family. She is the lucky one. Lisa Bellow is gone and her mother, Coleen, and her school friends are also struggling with their grief. The primary focus, though, is on Meredith and her mother Claire.

It’s not that the Oliver family didn’t have enough to deal with. Earlier that year, Evan, Meredith’s beloved older brother was blinded in one eye by an errant baseball, a simple accident with no one to blame. Evan did not just lose vision in one eye, he lost his possible baseball career, scholarships to college and the easy athletic primacy he enjoyed. Essentially, he lost the identity he had known and was struggling to find a new one for himself.

Claire and Mark Oliver seem to have the perfect marriage, so long as you don’t examine it closely. But trauma makes you examine everything and the flaws that were bearable become less so. Meanwhile, Meredith is drawn to Lisa’s circle of friends, mean girls who had no time for her before. She is also talking to Lisa. She knows what happened and is happening to Lisa with the kidnapper, that Lisa is being comforted by a little dog named Annie, that Lisa is being raped though it’s happening out of Meredith’s sight, she is also seeing what would happen if the kidnapper had chosen both of them. We know and Meredith’s parents know she needs help, but what kind and how?

The Fall of Lisa Bellow is an effective family drama, an exploration of the silences and absences of family life, the sudden chasms that erupt between people who love each other. It is also a book about family love, deep and abiding, even violent and superhuman. Claire loves her children fiercely, even when they are fighting her. There is a shocking scene where she exacts petty revenge against a child who bullies her son–and she’s not sorry. She will never be sorry. She understands Coleen Bellow’s anger and pain, even if she feels glad it’s not her pain.

This is a compulsive read that takes us from the first day of school until Christmas vacation, the Fall of Lisa Bellow, the Fall that fractures a family and offers hope that they will knit back together. When Perabo writes about the compulsive power of maternal love, she is at her most poetic and lyrical. This is the best writing in the book.

There is a troublesome suggestion when Meredith is imagining that the abductor has sex with Lisa, that it isn’t exactly rape, defining rape as someone jumping out of the bushes and tearing your clothes off. I don’t know how being abducted at gunpoint differs from jumping out of a bush, but Meredith is in eighth grade and clearly ill-informed about sex and rape and the difference between them. She thinks it must be unpleasant but not horrible. I am sure the author knows better, that sex and rape are not on the same spectrum, that rape is violence–about power, not sex. However, this never gets corrected. It would be one thing if there is any corrective to this idea, but there is not. Meredith is young, so are her friends, and she’s not talking to her family.

I would not recommend this book to young people without some serious discussion of this fallacy because it really sucks. The book is interesting and I cared about the people, but just because an eighth grade girl is likely to have internalized rape culture to the degree that she thinks an adult kidnapper forcing an eighth-grader to have sex is not exactly rape does not mean it should stand without correction. Yes, it’s very likely girls that age may think that. Someone needs to set it straight in the book. Uncorrected, uncontradicted, it’s dangerous and irresponsible.

The Fall of Lisa Bellow will be released March 14th. I was provided an e-galley for review by the publisher through NetGalley.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the review copy.

This was the first book/story I have read from the author. She writes well with excellent character development, always important to me. The story of the abduction of Lisa- one of the "cool" girls and the effect on those left behind provided a window into the community- what makes it tick, the grief process, the effect on family, friends and community. Most of this, the author paints with a fine brush. I loved the male characters in the story- the dad, Mark and the son/brother- Evan. However every female character was flawed in some very elemental way. Yes, the optimistic men and boys could have been a bit over the top, but they were not portrayed as nasty people.

I did not really understand what Meredith was going through and the ending didn't really explain, but kind of left you hanging... life will go on as before? this was just a hiccup in the community? everyone is irrevocably scarred? what really happened to Lisa and why?

To paraphrase the book, some children get taken and some children get left behind. This is the story of the those left behind. Contrary to what the title of this book may lead you to believe, this book is not inherently about Queen Bee eighth grader Lisa Bellow, but rather about h0 hum average girl Meredith Oliver who happens to be left behind on the floor of the Deli Barn sandwich shop the day Lisa Bellow is kidnapped at gunpoint. This not a plot driven book, but rather a familial character study on the Oliver family and the effects Lisa's kidnapping and Meredith not being kidnapped have on them.

We have the most insight to Meredith's perspective and that of her mother Claire. I thought the author did a masterful job of getting into the mind and thoughts of a typical eighth grader. Claire's perspective was interesting as well - her struggles with wanting and trying to keep her children safe and realizing that ultimately she has little control. Some readers may view Claire as a pessimist, but I would classify her more as a realist. (And the scene from the dentist office where Claire dishes out a little payback - well I can't say I completely disagree with her!)

How Meredith processes being the one left behind affects her relationship with her parents, former superstar athlete older brother trying to recover from a serious eye injury, her friends, Lisa's friends, Lisa's mother and even Lisa herself.

Very well-drawn interesting characters! The end left me wanting more answers for these people I had become invested in, but overall well worth the read!

Thank you NetGalley, Simon & Schuster, and Susan Perabo for providing an advanced readers copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. This book will be released March 14, 2017.

I was fortunate enough to score a DRC of this suspenseful novel from Simon and Schuster and Net Galley. It’s a book that defies the usual genre niches, and for this and many other reasons I enjoyed it immensely. It will be available to the public March 14, 2017.

The premise is that Meredith Oliver, a middle school student, is present when the local deli is robbed. She and her frenemy, Lisa Bellow, are ordered to get down on the floor. When it’s all over, Lisa has been kidnapped, but Meredith is still there, traumatized but otherwise unharmed.

There are two key components that make this story a strong one. The first is characterization. Both Meredith and her mother, Claire, are so carefully rendered that by the end of the book I felt as if I could predict what either of them would say in any given situation. The second is plot, and here Perabo’s expertise in her field—she is a professor of English as well as a novelist—shines through. She gives us just enough information to keep us taut and engaged, skillfully meting out a taste here, an additional nugget there, while leaving us with some of our original questions and posing new ones.

You see, Meredith is here, but she isn’t; at least not all of the time. She suffers from survivor’s remorse, to be certain, but a completely second life, one in which she and Lisa are together, is woven into the narrative, and it leaves us wondering whether Lisa’s abduction has perhaps been arranged by Claire or even by Meredith, or horror of horrors, the two of them as confederates.

Another compelling aspect of this novel is the family. Prior to the accident, Meredith and Claire constitute half of a cozy middle class family. Both parents are dentists, her father the kind of upbeat but slightly clueless guy that operates in the day-to-day, gliding happily along life’s surface. He’s not a deep thinker. Meredith’s older brother Evan, who she adores, is an athlete with a future, a baseball player being courted by any number of colleges, until the accident occurs in which one eye is lost. The doctor that attends him tells the family bluntly, “Imagine stepping on an ice cream cone.”

As Meredith winks in and out of the world around her, the family also is strained almost to the breaking point.

Meredith’s voice is so richly crafted that it will take the reader back to middle school. The wrenching emotions, the jockeying for social position, the depth of devotion and the dark, searing hate are so powerful that as I look back on my years as an eighth grade teacher, I am amazed that any of my students was able to learn anything. The social subtext is impossible to ignore, and it sends little flags out constantly in small ways; shifted body language, the choice as to whether to speak to someone in the halls, choosing who to befriend not only based on the friend’s qualities but on what it will mean about one’s other school relationships—all these things constitute a full time job. Meredith loves algebra, and I thank the author for crushing the stereotype that says girls don’t do that. Yet the rest of Meredith’s classes tend to pass in a fog that is dominated by the social interaction that’s anticipated both in the next class and in the hallway during passing time. The locker room is a nightmare waiting to happen, a Lord of the Flies with meaningful glances and flipped hair taking the place of spears and fire.

I won’t give away the end of this story because it would completely ruin it for you, but at the same time, I found myself both relieved and oddly let down by the denouement.

Recommended to those that love strong fiction.

I'm not really sure how I should review this book. I didn't find it a thriller. I didn't find it suspenseful. Actually I found myself shaking my head a lot, like what is going on here. There was one point in the book where there were about 5 or 6 pages that the scene from the sandwich shop was rewritten just exactly as it was previously and I thought that the book was messed up. That somehow the pages were going to be repeated all over again.

The bathtub scenes really kept throwing me for a loop. I'm not sure exactly what they were supposed to mean. I mean Meredith was a strange girl, was she dreaming that or was she just crazy?

I just didn't really get this book at all. Sorry.

Thanks to Simon and Schuster for approving my request and to Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars

When your life comes undone at the seams what do you do? Where do you turn to? What if you're only a 13 year old kid? Life shouldn't be hard, complicated, and vicious. Inexplicable things should not happen in your sphere of adolescent space, let alone to you directly. But Meredith doesn't have this luxury. Her space has been invaded, her safety bubble popped, and she's left lying in the ruins. Uncertain which way is up, Meredith must come to terms with her situation. She should be relieved that she is safe and back home with her family, but what about the other girl? What about Lisa Bellow? They were both on the floor of that deli when the robber, turned kidnapper, chose Lisa to take. It was a 50/50 chance; it so easily could have been her.

The Fall of Lisa Bellow is a coming of age story set in the aftermath of terrible personal tragedy. Coming to grips with the tatters of one afternoon gone awry. Her seemingly innocent and mundane life is turned upside down as Meredith struggles to make sense of life as she now knows it. She isn't ungrateful to be the one not chosen, but how is she to deal with the guilt? Her own family has already endured trauma and pain, hers now becoming just the icing on the cake for her mother who is already walking a fine line of coming unglued. Within the pages of this exceptionally moving and riveting book by Perabo, Meredith must find a way to cope and heal. With everything spinning in an uncontrollable cyclone of uncertainty, Meredith must decide whether she will let her circumstances make or break her- mold her or hold her back.

This is a story that will pull at any mother's heartstrings, and will make you hug your children a little tighter. It will affect you deeply. Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for providing me with this advanced review copy and opportunity.

The Fall of Lisa Bellow cleverly refers to both time of year and demise of a popular mean girl, from the point of view of the Oliver family: charming dad dentist Mark, judgmental mom dentist Claire, highschool son Evan, 13-yr old daughter Meredith. Susan Perabo is a mesmerizing story teller, and she goes beyond the purview of the "Mean Girls of Middle school" trope by playing around with some of its presumptions and with this intriguing premise: what if a popular girl and an unpopular girl are held at gunpoint and only one of them is released? How does the safe one deal with that guilt, how does her family, in general how do parents cope with destructive forces beyond their control?

I'd like to say I see argument for Growth over Fixed Mindset at play here: main character Meredith is not merely smart but she is good at math because she studies it and goes to math class well-prepared and thus she gets it; her older brother Evan is able to reclaim baseball skills after a devastating eye injury due to muscle memory, vigorous repetition, and hard work. I also liked seeing some uplifting examples of goodwill prevailing over rude and immoral contemporary conventions.

Although I think this book provided an interesting look at how the main character and her family reacted and survived after being a victim of crime - and a potential victim of kidnapping - to me it felt disjointed. I think having the viewpoint only from the female characters (mother and daughter) while making the male characters (father and son) so pivotal made the book feel weighted, and I never found my footing with it, even at the very end.

Thank You to Simon & Schuster for providing me with an advanced copy of Susan Perabo's novel, The Fall of Lisa Bellow, in exchange for an honest review.

PLOT- Eighth grader Meredith Oliver is a girl who exists in the middle. She's neither completely unpopular or part of the "in-crowd." Meredith and her friends both hate and emulate the popular girls, and in particular, their leader, Lisa Bellow.

Meredith and Lisa find their lives entwined, when they both happen to be buying sandwiches at a local deli during a robbery. Both girls are told to stay on the floor, while the deli's employee is beaten. The thief decides to kidnap Lisa, leaving the employee unconscious and Meredith shaking on the floor.

In the days, weeks, months following Lisa's kidnapping, Meredith tries to make sense of what happened to her classmate, and why she wasn't also taken? Although Meredith was spared, her mother, Claire, cannot shake the thought that she is unable to protect her children from harm. 

LIKE- Last year, I was introduced to Perabo's writing through her fantastic short story collection, Why They Run the Way They Do. Perabo is a fabulous storyteller and I was eager to read her first novel.

The Fall of Lisa Bellow has an unusual and interesting narrative structure. A large chunk of the story, about 1/3, is told through Meredith's fantasy of what both what she imagines has happened to Lisa, and what she imagines would happen if she had been kidnapped alongside Lisa. This fantasy is rich with specific details, including of the kidnapper, who in reality, was covered by a mask and could not be identified by Meredith. Meredith is so distraught by the robbery and kidnapping, that these fantasies become mixed-up with reality. She cannot distinguish the real details from her imaginary ones. They're muddled. She is obsessed with this fantasy world and with Lisa. She creates a fictional reality for Lisa, but she also befriend's Lisa's popular friends, who now accept Meredith in the aftermath, and she even becomes close to Lisa's mom. Lisa's mom is desperate for anything that will remind her of Lisa, which includes encouraging Lisa's friends to spend time at her house and hang out in Lisa's bedroom. While Claire is afraid that she can't physically protect her daughter, she is still losing Meredith to obsession and mental anguish.

Early in the story, we learn that Claire, a dentist, intentionally causes pain to one of her young patients, a boy that she suspects has been teasing her son. When Claire confesses her crime to her husband, he is horrified, and although Claire does not regret her actions (she poked a kid's sensitive tooth for temporary pain, not long-term damage), she realizes that her husband does not trust her. This is compounded with an emotional affair that she had when her mother was dying, something else that she confessed and which instigated his initial distrust toward her. This makes Claire feel isolated and unwilling to share her feelings with her husband. The robbery is not the only incident that has damaged Claire's children; her son Evan, had his promising baseball career ended, when an accident left him partially blind. The family had barely begun to recover from Evan's accident, when the robbery happened. Claire's unhinged and more than any other character, I wondered how she would cope. 

Perabo has created flawed, isolated characters that are existing on the brink. The Fall of Lisa Bellow works because of its familiarity. You don't need to have had a shock like surviving a robbery, to understand what it's like to fall down the rabbit hole with regard to obsessing over other people and "what if" scenarios. You don't have to lose your sight, to understand what it would mean to have your dreams crushed in an instant. You don't need to have the power and an opportunity to hurt a bully, to understand Claire's actions? The Fall of Lisa Bellow deals with extreme situations, but it's relatable throughout. 

DISLIKE- Nothing. The Fall of Lisa Bellow had me hooked from page one.

RECOMMEND- Yes! If you're not familiar with Perabo, you should be. I highly recommend The Fall of Lisa Bellow and Perabo's short story collections. Her writing is powerful, both in novel and short story formats.

This was a really strangely written book. The ending was good. The rest of the time it was difficult to tell what was actually happening and what Meredith was imagining. There was way too much of the mother's thoughts and life. Not to mention she was written so awkwardly. The things she said and did could be so horrible. It's hard for me to understand or feel interested in these characters. They weren't as fleshed out as they could have been.
There's also the fact that at one point Meredith is contemplating Lisa being raped, and how maybe it wouldn't really be rape because maybe she kind of wanted it and the r word being used elsewhere in the book - these things really turned me off. overall, I feel like this book has potential but it reminded me a lot of The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett, as far as a girl being obsessed with the disappearance of a popular girl from school that she hardly knew that thought was mean, and I also gave that book 2 stars.

Now that the publication date of this book is near, time to get it a review. This is a psychological mystery (a category that will forever be compared to Gone Girl.) This isn't anything like Gone Girl, but if you are interested in the fictional study of what happens to a crime victim, when they are mostly a bystander, this is very interesting.