I saw this book through a "help me figure out the title" Facebook page. It sounded super interesting, and I was anxious to find out the title. Once that mystery was solved, I downloaded Falling Deeper. It started out pretty well. I liked Ember, I liked Kayson. They were great at the beginning. The sheer number of times the word "smirk" was used was annoying, but it was easy enough to overlook because the plot was good.
As the story unfolded, however, I became more and more frustrated with the characters. As someone who has dealt with enabling and addiction, I understand how you want to help, and when you love someone, you don't want to abandon them during their addiction. However, at some point, you have to put yourself first. I was bothered by how often Ember overlooked the drug use by Kayson. I was especially bothered that Ember's mother overlooked it (as a mother, you don't want your 16/17 year old child to be exposed to this, so I would expect her to try to talk her daughter out of that relationship), especially knowing that her own husband was in jail. When they finally split, I thought this was the healthiest thing for both of them.
Four years later, Kayson is clean. Ember is teaching (I'm not sure how in four years, she finished her last year of high school, went through college, and is already 6 months into teaching; timelines are important to me, and this just didn't align) and endures a school shooting. This pulls Kayson to come home and reconnect with Ember.
I appreciated that he felt the need to check on Ember and wanted to get back together. My biggest issue is that, with the exception of sobriety, I didn't see any change in Kayson's behavior. He was still angry and yelled. He was still jealous. And Ember hadn't grown up much either. She still gave in to whatever Kayson wanted. I also felt as if the ending was really rushed; I didn't feel satisfied with the loose ends like school shooting were tied up (I know it was kind of mentioned, but it was still too loose for me).
I know it seems like I didn't like this book, but I really loved the idea of the plot. I love that it dealt with addiction and second chances, as well as tackling a tough situation of a school shooting. I think that this book had a lot of potential, but it just didn't work for me.