Blog Tour: Falling In Between by Devon Ashley (Review)

From A to Z is one of today's stops on the Falling In Between Blog Tour, so welcome! My review of Falling In Between is posted below, and be sure to stop by Devon's blog for the full tour schedule and a chance to win a signed doodle-graph copy of the book!

Devon will also be visiting From A to Z on February 6th to share some of her favorite love songs, so don't miss that!

Falling In Between

By: Devon Ashley

Publisher: Indie Published

Release Date: February 14, 2012

Genre/Age: YA Paranormal

Pages: 264

Source: ARC from author

Finally! A private conversation. And all I had to do was throw myself off a cliff, drown in a pond in my undies and let him put his hands on my breasts to bring me back to life. Yay me… (yeah, that’s sarcasm).

Yep, that pretty much sums up the most craptastic night of Jenna Baker’s life. She drowns after jumping off a cliff, meets a hotty named Chance in the pearlescent in-between and is brought back to life by her soon-to-be boyfriend Robert.

Just when things start to move forward with Robert, the guy she’s been crushing on for a year now, in walks the man of her dreams – literally. Chance suddenly appears in her dream every time she closes her eyes. So it’s Robert by day and Chance by night. One in the real world and one in the dream world. What could possibly go wrong?

Absolutely nothing – until she comes face to face with the guy she met in the in-between, and realizes her romantic rendezvous with Chance may be more than just her imagination.

Falling In Between has a really unique premise, and while I did enjoy reading it, unfortunately it didn’t grab me the way I had hoped it would. The story starts off very promising, with Jenna drowning and meeting a mysterious guy in the “in-between” before being revived, but I feel like it never really lived up to this promise for me. It wasn’t a bad book by any means, it just wasn’t completely my cup of tea.

The main issue I had was that there was very little development of Jenna’s relationships with both Chance and Robert. Her relationships with both of them start pretty quickly, and even throughout their time together I feel like I didn’t really see the progression of their connection.  It felt like almost every time we saw them it was in some sexual situation – I feel like I never really got to know either of the boys very well outside of that and I didn’t feel invested in her relationship with either of them.

There isn’t much plot or conflict other than the main issue based around Jenna being with the two boys, and since I didn’t really  connect with either of them I just couldn’t bring myself to care that much. Because of this, I felt like there was a lack of material for me to identify with, although I did enjoy their story on a surface level.

In contrast to the lack of development of Jenna’s romantic relationships, I think her relationship with her best friend and roommate Sophie was very well done and it was my favorite part of the novel. I really loved Sophie and the scenes with the two of them and their bonding sessions and conversations in the room were so fun. Jenna clearly needed a guiding influence in her life and I love that Sophie was there for her.

Though technically not in diary form, reading Falling in Between feels very much like you are reading Jenna’s journal and she’s just having a conversation with you. It’s very casual and intimate and you can get inside her head easily, which I liked a lot. This also gives the book a bit of an addictive quality – I read the almost the entire thing in just one sitting.

If you’re looking for a sweet and simple love story with a bit of a paranormal aspect, you might want to check out Falling In Between. Overall I would have liked a little more from the story, but it was nevertheless a light, enjoyable read.