The Fall of January Cooper by Audrey Bell Pages: 320
Published by Createspace Independent Pub on June 17, 2014
Genres: contemporary, Love & Romance, New Adult
Source: eARC from Author
How do you lose everything?
Ask January Cooper.
She was the daughter of a Dallas multimillionaire, the debutante of the year, and the girl most likely to get whatever she wanted.
But when her father is arrested for securities fraud, the girl who had everything starts to lose everything. And once she starts falling, she can't seem to stop.
When she walks into Christian Cutlass's bar, she meets the first person who sees all the way through her. And Christian Cutlass meets the first girl who doesn't care about who he used to be and what he lost one night when he was nineteen years old.
She's gorgeous and hurt. He's twisted in too many ways to count. She's the girl with nothing left to lose. He's the boy who lost everything he lived for.
How do you lose everything? You start by falling.
Audrey Bell sold me on The Fall of January Cooper. I read her first novel, Love Show, and I can’t even say how much I loved it. I would recommend it to fans of new adult everywhere. So I knew that I couldn’t pass up The Fall of January Cooper. And when Audrey had me tearing up within the first two chapters of the book, I knew I was dealing with a powerful story. The romance aspect was a little tame compared to a lot of new adult, but the emotional slow burn reluctant romance between January and Christian was fantastic.
January starts the story out as a rich harvard student. Everyone painted her out to being this huge B**ch, but that wasn’t exactly what I saw. I saw someone who was stuck up, yes, but not really a complete mean girl. I know that is what her friends described her as, but to be honest that only made me believe it less, because her friends were all beyond awful. I would hate to be associated with their group. Even if you disagree with me, and you do think she is a raging B, you will feel for this girl. There is no way that you can’t. Her world crumbles around her overnight. Her and Christian have that in common. Everything in their lives took an awful turn in a split second.
Christian and his brother were both college hockey players. They got into a fatal car crash as they were arguing about Sam feeling inadequate to Christian, who is the star player. Sam died and Christian had a career ending injury. (and no I didn’t spoil anything, this all happens within the first two chapters) It was so heartbreaking. I hate that his brother died while they were fighting, and it was such a guilt inducing fight too. The story moves forward by having January and Christian meet at and working at the bar in town. I loved watching the two of them interact with each other. It was different from each of their perspectives. For Christian, January got under his skin and was really the only new person in his life that could get him outside of his head. He didn’t really interact with anyone, and the few that he did were very surface. I loved watching January edge her way under his skin. Even if they were bickering for most of the time. It was cute.
And January was ostracized when news of her father got out. I would say I wanted to punch her father, but what he did, didn’t even shock me. I know that is kind of awful and jaded, but I have seen it happen more frequently than I would care to. (Think Joe Guidice from real housewives of new jersey.) These two are put through the ringer. The story is told in dual narrative between January and Christian, and each of them is really battling their own demons. I really didn’t have much to complain about with this book, other than the fact that I wanted more story. I just wanted the story to keep going. I thought for about 60% of the book, the story was pretty evenly split between January and Christian’s issued and I loved that about the story. But from there on, the main focus was on January and Christian helping her, which I loved, but I kept wanting to go back to Christian’s family and see more of him and their issues dealt with.
I also wanted a little bit more of a steamy romance with them. I felt like we were tiptoeing around that for a lot of the book, and the slow burn romance was great. I loved the story, but when we finally did get to the romance, there was so little of the story left. I want another book about them. Maybe focusing on Christian’s injury. Please Audrey! Give me more January and Christian. I love them!
Have You Entered these Giveaways Yet?
Click on the banners to enter
Autumn @TheAutumnReview
Thank you for reviewing!!
kindlemom1
I love when a story can grip you after only a few chapters. You always know you are in for quite a ride when that happens. This sounds fabulous and like one I should really add to my TBR pile.
Kimberly
This does sound like a good one 🙂 I love when a book really gets me within a couple chapters. Great review. Definitely adding this one to my TBR list.
–Kimberly @ Turning the Pages
Christina R.
LOVE her characters! And she always writes characters who are real and easy to like but still flawed and you can’t help but want to know more!!
Lovely review 🙂
Megan McDade
I havent read any NA books as I tend to stick to YA but one of my 2015 book goals is to read NA adding this book to the list!