Review: The Long Fall

The Long Fall
Author: Julia Crouch

Publication Date:  June 19th 2014      
Publisher: Headline
~A copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review~

 

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How far would you go to protect your secrets?

Greece, 1980

Emma takes part in a shattering, violent event. An event to which she is anything but an innocent bystander.
She is only eighteen, but this marks her fall from innocence.
It will haunt her for the rest of her life.


London, now


Kate has the perfect existence: a glossy image, a glamorous home, a perfect family.
But there are cracks.
All is not what it seems.


And now the two worlds are about to collide.
Somebody's out for revenge.
Someone who has been waiting thirty years...

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I wish I could say that I liked The Long Fall, but I can't. There was a lot of issues- that I will talk about in the minute. I don't usually read Adult unless it's really something I can't pass up. Like Gretel in the Dark and The Three, but what drew me to The Long Fall is that it's a mystery and it sounded like a revenge based story, which I've loved since reading Heart-Shaped Bruise by Tanya Byrne. However...I didn't really get that in this novel.

What I thought would be a revenge story and mystery, finding out what happened in Greece- and while we did find out, it's not what it is, and while it's partly what it says it is, it's completely different, and what I got was a messy story that for the most part was confusing with a main character I didn't like. Maybe I'm not cut out for Adult.

The narrative style is a put off, we have Now and Then, and this wouldn't have annoyed me, I've read a lot of them, it builds up to the story nicely but with part one of The Long Fall we have dual perspectives that change from chapter to chapter- Emma them, Kate now but suddenly stop in part two, and we're reading a chunk of what happened in Greece, then the next part where with Kate now, so it's a random pattern that's not exactly hard to follow, it just annoyed me because it was huge chunk out of the story in one go that just gradually learning it through the alternating perspective.

There's some huge issues in this that I didn't like the way they were handled, including rape, drugs, and the way Emma acted. The rape you wouldn't have suspected, it was a bit random and all of a sudden, but the way it was done, the way Emma wrote it down rubbed me the wrong way. She blamed herself, as many victims do, so it wasn't that, it's the fact that Emma didn't want to portray or act like a victim so she started doing drugs, bulimia and other issues, but she never done anything to not become that victim, she didn't want to be a victim yet she wasn't doing anything to the contrary.  She didn't report it (which, I know loads of victims don't even do now- never mind in 1980) because she didn't think she'd get believed, which I get. But, she also then started commenting on what other girls were wearing and saying they "were asking for it". I can also get that she'd be bitter, but she honestly didn't even sound bitter. She just sounded, I don't know, just not...right.

So yeah, what I thought would be a great mystery, wasn't. The revenge plot didn't really make sense either, and the adults voices didn't even sound like adults. There were a lot of issues in The Long Fall for me, too many for me to actually enjoy it, unfortunately.