Review: The Upside of Falling by Alex Light

Becca Hart isn’t looking for romance. But when her ex-best friend teases for never having a boyfriend, Becca says she actually has one. She never expected football player Brett Wells to walk by the conversation and say that he was her boyfriend.

Becca has no idea why Brett would help her because everyone at school wants to date him. But Brett is focused on football and college, so having a fake girlfriend gets everyone off his back about relationships. Besides, they don’t have to be together for too long.

Becca and Brett make some rules for dating each other so both of them benefit from the arrangement. But the more time the two spend together, the more they realize they have more in common than ever expected. And with the drama surrounding Brett’s home life, he could really use a friend.

The Upside of Falling is what happens when two seemingly different people fall for each other. Can Brett and Becca turn a fake relationship into a real one?

Finally, we got to read The Upside of Falling, which has been on our TBR for a while. We were in the mood for a cute romance and that’s what led us to this YA contemporary. And we obviously love the fake dating trope because it usually leads to a cute and funny story.

While the characters were a bit stereotypical, we still liked the. Becca is the quiet girl who loves to read and Brett is the popular jock with a heart of gold. They weren’t the most original, but they were both good people who were trying to find themselves, despite problems at home.

For Becca, she was still dealing with the fact that her dad left and cut ties with her, even though he lived in town with his new wife. For Brett, everything has been feeling off lately, with his dad being distant and his mom becoming emotional easily.

It was nice to see that the characters had more depth than we originally expected. Becca was so supportive of Brett, especially when everything went crazy one night and his family became the main source of town gossip. Brett didn’t deserve it and it annoyed us how immaturely his parents acted throughout the story.

Lucky for Becca, her mom is great and hilarious. We enjoyed the scenes set at her mom’s bakery and it made us wish we had place like this to hangout and enjoy sweet treats.

As for Becca and Brett’s relationship, we cheered them on from the beginning. However, we kind of disagreed about a source of conflict between them. We get that Brett was upset, but feel he wouldn’t have acted that way, especially considering what happened the night before. That threw us off a bit.

While eventually things worked out, we were annoyed that Becca still basically came to him. After what he said, he should have done more to make it up to her. Maybe a grand gesture? Becca deserved it after how hurt she was by what Brett did. He knew that she wasn’t quick to trust people or even fall for for someone.

However, we did enjoy the ending and everyone working out their issues. It felt a little like a lesson how couples go through different things, some work it out and some don’t.

Overall, The Upside of Falling was a sweet read that had some unexpected emotional portions. When we started it we thought it would be a cute fluffy read, but the themes were much deeper. While there were a few aspects we would change, we ended up enjoying the book.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐.5/⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐