BEFORE I FALL

When your novel’s heroine opens the story as a popular, mean highschooler, the story will be one of two things: a paean to Dolce & Gabbana or a tale of redemption. Sam’s story is of the latter kind: a Groundhog Day–style repeated day she must relive until she gets it right. With each repeat, she changes something in her relationships—to her family, to the cruelty of her queen-bee friends, to her lecherous boyfriend, to the hot math teacher and to the countless nerds, dorks and freaks she’s always abused or ignored. If she can just get it right, Sam thinks, she’ll be freed from her loop and can move on with her life. Within this predictable framework Oliver builds a quietly lyrical story of selfhood and friendship, avoiding the obvious paths out of the time loop. Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day character used his repeated day to learn French; Sam, more valuably, learns that life’s composed of “little gaps and jumps and stutters that can never be reproduced.” Unexpectedly rich. (Fantasy. 12-15)