Twice.
Drew and Shane have been best friends through everything. The painful death of Shane's dad. The bitter separation of Drew's parents. Through sleepaway camps and family heartache, basketball games and immeasurable loss, they've always been there for each other.
When Stevie meets Drew and Shane, life should go on as normal.
But a simple coin toss alters the course of their year in profound and unexpected ways.
Told in dual timelines, debut author Jennie Wexler's Where It All Lands delivers a heartbreaking and hopeful novel about missed opportunities, second chances, and all the paths that lead us to where we are. (Pub Date: Jul 06 2021)
An interesting proposal of telling the two sides of a coin. As well as its two flips.
Shane and Drew are best friends who fall for the new girl Stevie. Because they've always solved their problems flipping a coin, that's how Drew decides they should do now, too. The book presents us with two points of view for each of the two results and then what would have happened had fate established it was heads or tails, Drew or Shane who had the right to ask Stevie out.
I loved this idea but the execution resulted in a 2.5 read, which I'm rounding up.
I didn't like the characters very much. Shane was supposed to be the more likeable but he was a little boring to me as a main character. Stevie and Drew were a mess that as I read on made me relate less and less to them. The three of them are well constructed, even if I didn't enjoy the result. They each deal with their problems and have their depths. There aren't many side characters, except for Ray, who was probably my favorite of all—but not by that much—and a few more with even minor appearances.
The summary had already let us know the story would have two timelines and it's easy to guess that one would be if Drew had won the flip and the if other, Shane. Which is interesting, but made the writer fall for a trap, in my opinion. I know people who love reading the same scene from different angles, but I'm not one, unless it's very important, and the result is almost the same. What I think make it worse, though I have no idea how it could work out differently, is that the change of timeline occurs in the middle of the book. It's not that the author concludes one to go to the other, but she changes very close to it. It means, we start the whole thing again right before learning the end. This made me grunt.
Near the end, the two timelines finally come in alternate chapters, but this was also a little confusing because we're talking about the same two characters in different states of mind, so changing the chapter broke all my connection to them and starting the next meant an effort to recover the turmoil of emotions two chapters behind. I'm not sure either worked.
Was there a meaning to telling two stories with the same characters? I feel I got what the writer meant to do, and it felt almost like therapy. That's why I think that even though this wasn't the book for me, there are many readers looking for this kind of healing read. I can't spoil any further, but if you like books that make you think about life, see it form a different angle, this is it. And because of that, the book can feel a discussion on when you start doing "what if"s with where life leads you. I like food for thought but I preferred the dual timeline leading me somewhere more practical.
Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.
Rating: 3 out of 5.
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