Learning to Fall

by Anne Clermont

Book Overview

A behind-the-curtains peek into the glamorous but often heartbreaking world of competitive show jumping, Learning to Fall is a universal story of healing, hope, and what it means to love.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1940716780
• ISBN13: 9781940716787
• Release Date: August 2016
• Publisher: Sparkpress
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

a novel of two halves but I highly recommend it!

In all honesty, I almost stopped reading this book about halfway through. Some of my favorite books include disasters, so it's not that I can't take heartache or depression. But Bryn, the main character (whom I really loved), just had disasters dropping one after the other, until I started to feel like it was never going to end. I decided to read a bit more and as it turned out, the timing was perfect. Right there the book took a really interesting turn--Bryn herself was the agent of positive change, but she also understands that she needs help, and gains some interesting relationships. It wasn't at all like everything was easy and zipppety-do-dah from this point, but this is where some positive change really began to take place. I thought Jason was a great character, though sometimes a cliche -- the fascinating handsome stranger with the secret. But he's more than this; the author does a good job, I thought, of making Jason have to warm up to Bryn, just as she did with him. I was confused by what I was supposed to take away at the end. I wasn't sure exactly what the deal was at the end, and if it was supposed to be that way. However, I loved the book and having questions at the end of a book is a positive thing (so long as there aren't too many!) The writing is great, the story is riveting, and the horse stuff is plentiful and real. It's not exclusive, though; the author does a terrific job of explaining things so we horsey people can be loving the specificity and so can people who've never been on a horse in their lives. Some of the characters are predictable in their end-game but you didn't know how they were going to get there. And I loved Bryn. She is a great character. I would love to see her and Jason again, perhaps working on a farm together (not necessarily "together"). I hope this author will write a followup, though I don't think she intended to make this into a series. Please forgive my tense switches -- I've had to write this in bits and pieces I enjoyed the second half of this book so much I thought about giving it five stars even with the first half being a slog for me. But that doesn't accurately represent my overall look at the book. So it gets 4*. Warning: the accident referred to in the book description takes place early in the first chapter, and it's a violent, gory scene that the main character, Bryn, witnesses. Her experience is a nightmare that follows her, having implications beyond the emotional loss and the fear of losing their farm, but it's a bit of a phantom in this book, following Bryn quietly. I don't want to to put any spoilers in here, but the extreme violence and emotional trauma so soon in the book caught me off guard. I wished I'd known the vague accident in the book description had been just a tiny bit more specific.