Young Adult Review: How to Fall by Jane Casey

How To Fall by Jane Casey

I picked this up in a charity shop not realising it was actually a Young Adult book.  However, having read a Maeve Kerrigan book of Casey's before I thought it'd be interesting to read this myself before passing it on to my daughter to read.

Jess Tennant is a sixteen year old who, with her mother, is spending the summer in her mothers home village.  Jess is dubious about this as her mother has been estranged from her  family since before Jess was born and she has never met her aunt (her mother's twin) or her family.  The only thing Jess knows about them is that her cousin, who was the spitting image of Jess, died the previous year in a fall off the cliffs.

When Jess meets her cousins she becomes intrigued as to why her cousin, who was reportedly very happy, would commit suicide.  Jess, despite being warned off by some of the local teens, the police and her dead cousin's best friend, determines to solve the mystery of her death.

As an adult reading a teen book I really enjoyed it.  The last teen books I read were Nancy Drew and it was great to see a modern girl sleuth take on the baddies in an up to date way.  I thought Casey made her teenage characters realistic and this definitely had a contemporary feel to it.

She touched on some really important aspects of teen life; fitting in with 'the in crowd', bullying, relationships and  underage drinking.

I intend to get my daughter to write a Young Adult review of this book and you can look forward to reviews of more Young Adult crime fiction in the future.  But If I were a teenager again I'd be reading the Jess Tennant books- Heck! I will anyway.