Falling From the Sky by Sarina Bowen

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Title: Falling From the Sky
Author: Sarina Bowen
Series: Gravity #2
Published by: Blunder Woman Productions
Release Date: August 23, 2017
Format: Audiobook, Kindle Book
Narrator: Tanya Eby, Aiden Snow
Pages: 268
Length: 6 hours and 52 minutes
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Source: Hoopla
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2016 Playpire Diversity Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks ✩ iTunes ✩ Authors Direct ✩ Libro.FM
My rating:

Blurb:

She's the woman he doesn't remember. He's the man she can't forget.

Bad boy Hank “Hazardous” Lazarus used to have everything: a gorgeous girlfriend, a career as a freestyle snowboarder and a spot on the US Olympic team. Nine months ago, after a bad crash in the half pipe, he woke up in the hospital, unable to move his legs. Now he’s landed there again, but gravity is not the culprit. With his family pressuring him to try a groundbreaking treatment, Hank self-medicates with too much tequila instead.

Doctor Callie Anders has the courage to restart a patient’s heart with a thousand volts of electricity, yet she’s afraid to risk her own. So she doesn’t confess to her newest patient they they met just before the accident, an encounter that he doesn’t remember. Even as their friendship develops, she won’t admit that she regrets turning down his dinner invitation, or that her heart stutters every time those inked shoulders roll through the door of the therapy department.

With another Vermont winter coming again, Hank needs a hand out from under the avalanche of his disappointments. If only Callie were brave enough to take the job.

This book is a standalone novel, no cliffhangers, no prior experience necessary.

My Review:

ORIGINAL REVIEW:
3.5 stars — Ms. Bowen sucked me in again with her First Chapter Friday.  I can’t seem to resist when I notice them, and after reading it I had to one-click this baby.  I found the beginning of the story to be very compelling, but I lost my verve for the story somewhere along the way and the ending kind of fizzled for me.  I actually hadn’t been paying attention to my progress bar, and so was kind of surprised when I got to the epilogue.  I’m not sure what I was expecting to come, but the climax never felt that impactful, and so I was sort of still waiting for something to happen I think.

I’m conflicted on the characters, particularly Callie.  Initially I was all on board with her, b/c I tend to gravitate towards the insecure heroines…I guess I see myself in them.  But somewhere along the way I just wanted to know more about her.  I guess I could vibe with her insecurities as far as relationships go, but I didn’t always get her insecurities with her job…or maybe that’s not it, but I can’t seem to pinpoint it.  Just that I wanted more.

As for Hank — he was definitely intriguing, but I kind of wanted more from him too.  There was so much going on in his life, and I feel like we only scratched the surface of what he would be going through after such a huge event.  I guess I just expected more hardships, but we ended up skipping over his transition period, so I had a hard time accepting that he could just live alone and independently after the accident in such a short amount of time.  But I honestly don’t know the reality of it, so I really couldn’t tell you how realistic this was.  I like the little bit we got from him when he was struggling with his new norm, but it just felt like there was a lot of untapped potential there.

And I enjoyed the two of them together, but I didn’t get a lot of depth from the relationship either.  I liked how Callie really didn’t see the chair when looking at Hank, but I couldn’t always grasp what attracted them to one another besides lust.

I’m definitely interested in the other 2 stories in this series, but I don’t feel quite the same urgency to get to them after having read this one.  Basically this book had so much potential, but it was just missing that extra something to push it to the top for me.

ON REREAD (audio reread, January 2022):
3.5 stars — I will admit that the reread, and possibly because it was audio, went better for me!  Part of it was that I wasn’t surprised by the ending, so the pacing felt okay to me.  Though, I don’t remember that epilogue from the first time, it was super cute!

The other part was that I’ve read more books with characters with disabilities since the first time I read this, and so I was not at all surprised by his growth and development and independence.

I still kind of wanted more from both characters, but all in all it was a smooth read, definitely helped by the great narrations by Ms. Eby and Mr. Snow.  So I’m rounding up this time.