The Year We Fell Down

By Sarina Bowen

Synopsis

The sport she loves is out of reach. The boy she loves has someone else. What now?

She expected to start Harkness College as a varsity ice hockey player. But a serious accident means that Corey Callahan will start school in a wheelchair instead. Across the hall, in the other handicapped-accessible dorm room, lives the too-delicious-to-be real Adam Hartley, another would-be hockey star with his leg broken in two places. He’s way out of Corey’s league.

Also, he’s taken.

Nevertheless, an unlikely alliance blooms between Corey and Hartley in the “gimp ghetto” of McHerrin Hall. Over tequila, perilously balanced dining hall trays, and video games, the two cope with disappointments that nobody else understands.

They’re just friends, of course, until one night when things fall apart. Or fall together. All Corey knows is that she’s falling. Hard.

But will Hartley set aside his trophy girl to love someone as broken as Corey? If he won’t, she will need to find the courage to make a life for herself at Harkness — one which does not revolve around the sport she can no longer play, or the brown-eyed boy who’s afraid to love her back.

Review

There are a few reasons I bought this book. 1 – It was free. 2 – It’s about hockey. 3 – I’ve read one of Sarina’s books before and enjoyed it very much. I’m always a little nervous about reading books about college-aged students, because more often than not they’re chock-full of drama and/or they’re overly emotional and/or there’s a lot of pushing and pulling between the two main characters. I didn’t need to worry about any of that because THE YEAR WE FELL DOWN was pretty much perfect. This was just a nice love story about a boy and a girl who meet, become friends and slowly fall in love. I loved it.

I loved Corey. She’s so strong, both emotionally and physically. She’s paralysed from the legs down so her dreams of playing college hockey are gone forever. She’s determined not to let her injuries weaken her and to show everyone that even though her life has been turned upside down, she’s still capable of living it. And she’s not some snivelling little girl when it comes to Hartley either. She wants him, but if he can’t see what’s right in front of him, then it’s his loss. She knows she deserves better and will not settle for being anyone’s second best. I absolutely loved when she made up her mind to move on from him, and she stuck to it.

And as great as Hartley was, I didn’t want to spend the whole year lapping up the scraps that were left over when Stacia was busy reapplying her lipstick.

And Hartley was great and such a good guy that you can’t really hate him when he stays with Stacia. He has his reasons which even he knows are stupid, but luckily it doesn’t take him long to re-evaluate his life and make a decision as to who is the better woman.

I really felt for Corey when reading about some of the difficulties she faced as a wheelchair-bound woman, from not being able to see what food was available at the cafeteria buffet, to being discriminated against by people with good intentions, to thinking that no-one would ever find a woman in a wheelchair sexy. But she ended up with a good group of friends who treated her like they would any other person. And this book had a little bit of everything in it, but what I really liked was that it had just the right amount of humour injected into it at just the right time to lighten up the story.

Was this going to become one of those moments, the kind you look back on later and wonder why you followed a hot guy into a shaky, unmarked elevator?