I am delighted to be featuring Ella Harper's superb novel, If I Fall today on Books, Life and Everything. It was published by Canelo on 22nd January 2018, who describe it as
A truly powerful and unforgettable story of love,
friendship, and real life, If I Fall is perfect for readers of Alice Peterson,
Amanda Prowse and Lianne Moriarty.
Four university friends, four devastating secrets.
I’m really sorry for what I’m about to do...
It’s fifteen years since graduation, and Connie, Jonas, JJ
and Layla have managed to remain close despite the odds. They’ve supported each
other, but are some things too big for friendship?
Connie is desperate to maintain the veneer of perfect family
life.
Jonas is feeling the pressure at work.
Layla’s career is unravelling thanks to her ill mother
JJ’s past is catching up with him.
When they stumble and fall, who will be there to catch them?
I'm sure that the blurb above has got your attention. Just to tempt you a bit more, here's an extract from Chapter 4 of the book itself:
JONAS
This was a huge case. HUGE. Jonas could feel the pressure
mounting inside him. On the one hand, pressure pushed him to strive harder. On
the other, it made his chest tight, his breath shallow and gave him a strong
sense that going somewhere quiet to have a heart attack in peace might be best
for everyone.
Jonas took a breath and put his pen down for a second. At
times like this, he needed to remind himself that he had a good life. Not
outlandish, by any means. But decent. And he had worked hard for it.
It was just the case. Jonas leafed through his notes. He
loved his job most days. Loved it. He was a criminal solicitor. He was the
first person called to the police station after the arrest and he spent much of
his time interviewing clients or at the Magistrates’ court. He worked for a
firm called Palmers & McCormack, run by two partners, and he was fairly
senior and established. He took on a good many cases and he had a high success
rate.
But occasionally, a case like this cropped up and it became
all-consuming and stressful. Because when you were a criminal solicitor, you
were only as good as your last case and you were at the bidding of the
barrister, who would often become demanding about what they needed for research
and evidence. Jonas had only slipped up a few times during his career and on a
minor level, but he knew how costly it could be – both to the company he was
working for and to his reputation.
Jonas checked his watch. He didn’t want to be late tonight.
He had been late on and off for weeks since this case started and it was
getting him down. He speed-dialled Connie.
‘Hey. How’s it going?’
‘Everything’s fine,’ Connie answered. She sounded how she
often did when he called. Calm, with a slight edge.
‘Girls OK?’ he asked, checking the time. Yes, they should be
home by now.
‘Bickering like… children,’ she said.
Jonas heard the smile in her voice and his mouth lifted
slightly in response. Connie carried on talking and Jonas’s eyes drifted to the
wall. To his certificates. His qualifications had been difficult to achieve and
he had worked so hard to get where he was now. And Jonas was still ambitious.
He still wanted to move higher up and push his career even further. He was
going for a Partnership if he could. At very least, Assistant Partner.
Connie was saying something about a dinner party at the
other end of the phone. Jonas was aware of the dinner party, but he wasn’t sure
what the big deal was. Even though it was fifteen years down the line, he and
Connie saw JJ and Layla constantly.
Well. Not JJ so much, as he was usually too busy banging
women to have much time for dinner parties and polite conversation, the lucky
sod, Jonas thought to himself. Not that he envied JJ with any real seriousness.
As far as he could see, it was a lifestyle full of fun, but brimming with
emptiness. Had it really been worth leaving Connie back in their uni days, just
to play the field? Just because he wasn’t ready to settle down? Jonas had put
their liaison down to a fleeting infatuation, but he had realised over the
years from a few things that Connie had said that it had been rather more than
that. But JJ had chosen to end the relationship and obviously JJ’s loss had
been Jonas’s gain. And Jonas was also sure that he, with Connie and his girls,
was far happier than JJ was now. Stressed up to the eyeballs, granted – but
happier overall.
‘When is this dinner party supposed to take place?’ Jonas
asked.
‘You don’t think it will happen?’ Connie sounded irritable,
and that irked Jonas for no apparent reason.
‘I haven’t a clue,’ he answered, not sure why he hadn’t made
it clearer that no, he didn’t actually think it would happen. ‘But JJ is often…
tied up elsewhere, for starters.’
There was a pause at the other end of the phone.
‘And Layla is away with the fairies.’
‘That’s not very nice,’ Connie said. ‘It’s not so much that,
it’s that she’s a bit worried about…’
‘Listen, I have to go,’ Jonas interrupted, putting the phone
down.
His boss, Lukas, was approaching and he looked determined.
My Thoughts
I'm not sure why, but when I first picked up this book, I was expecting it to be full of romance and lightness. Well there is romance, for sure, but the happy, light tone isn't there- it is much more complicated than that. That's not to say that there are no happy and light parts in the book, there certainly are, but there are some heavy themes dealt with: violence, abuse, both mental and physical, dementia, changing relationships.
This book belongs to four people who were students together and their lives fifteen years later. They're all great creations. I was equally interested in all their stories. You are told from the beginning that something terrible has happened to one of them. As becomes clear as the story unfolds, it could be any of the four. I didn't guess until it was unveiled.
Loyalty and friendship are put under the microscope. Duty to family members and years invested in relationships are shown to affect them. The surface that they present to the world hides dark secrets which they cannot all admit until they are overwhelmed. Will they be there for each other as they promised when young? Read it and find out!
In short: an arresting story of the bonds of friendship, put under the pressure of real life.
About the Author
Ella Harper learned foreign languages, and imagined she
might eventually get a glamorous job speaking French. After climbing her way up
the banking ladder, Ella started idly mapping out the beginnings of a novel on
an old laptop. When she realised her characters were more real to her than
dividends and corporate actions ever could be, she left her job to become a
writer.
Thanks to Ellie Pilcher of Canelo and Ella Harper for a copy of the book and a place on the tour.
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