How to Keep Rolling After a Fall

Author: Karole Cozzo
Publisher: Swoon Reads
Release Date: 8/2/16
Version Reviewed: digital ARC courtesy of NetGalley
Rating: ★★★★

Nikki Baylor wants a second chance. But will anyone grant her one? A couple months ago, she took part in a cyber bullying incident for which she took 100% of the fall. Now she's the girl everyone is whispering about. Her friends, and co-bullies, have ditched her and she's been expelled from school. She never leaves the house without a baseball cap pulled down to obscure her face, hoping she can get through the day without being recognized and vilified. Her once loving and supportive parents have gone cold. She's given up the things she used to love like singing and preforming. She's not sure what future, if any, waits for her after graduation.

Nikki meets Pax at the rehabilitation center where she does community service. Pax is the first person since the bullying fall out who sees her as a person instead of just her sin. Pax believes everyone deserves a second chance. He feels his own reckless actions resulted in him being paralyzed from the waist down and having to adjust to a new reality in a wheelchair. Pax is confident, good looking, charming, and Nikki starts to fall for him. But Pax has insecurities that get in the way and that Nikki can't fully understand. Neither Nikki nor Pax is where they thought they'd be in life. Can a pair of teenagers make a relationship work when they're still carrying so much baggage?

This is a sweet and fun book. Pax is one of those perfect YA boy characters we all know don't really exist but like to read about anyway. The relationship between he and Nikki is genuine and uplifting. I did not like Nikki's parents. They adore their queen bee daughter until she gets publicly outed as a mean girl, at which point they drop her like it's hot and act like she's contagious. Way to straddle both extremes, mom and dad.

The ending was nice, but for me it was a bit abrupt. Pax had a lot of issues he needed to work on, and I didn't see much resolution on them. I also felt like Nikki's story was incomplete. Yes, she gets the guy, but that's not everything.