Review: Free to Fall by Lauren Miller

From Goodreads: Fast-forward to a time when Apple and Google have been replaced by Gnosis, a monolith corporation that has developed the most life-changing technology to ever hit the market: Lux, an app that flawlessly optimizes decision making for the best personal results. Just like everyone else, sixteen-year-old Rory Vaughn knows the key to a happy, healthy life is following what Lux recommends. When she’s accepted to the elite boarding school Theden Academy, her future happiness seems all the more assured. But once on campus, something feels wrong beneath the polished surface of her prestigious dream school. Then she meets North, a handsome townie who doesn’t use Lux, and begins to fall for him and his outsider way of life. Soon, Rory is going against Lux’s recommendations, listening instead to the inner voice that everyone has been taught to ignore - a choice that leads her to uncover a truth neither she nor the world ever saw coming. 

My Rating: 4 hearts 

Thoughts on the Novel: Although it took a bit of time for me to get into Lauren Miller’s Free to Fall, I eventually ended up sucked into the book because of all the twists that it kept delivering. Initially a story about a girl attempting to discover more about her mother, the plot becomes so much grander and ends up filled with secrets, lies, and conspiracies!

Learning more about her mother really causes Rory grows throughout the novel. At the beginning of Free to Fall, she’s very much dependent on Lux for decision making; but as she learns more about the app, she starts to rely on her own inner voice. (I would have preferred the Doubt to have been more like an intuition rather than an auditory hallucination though.)

I also liked the romance, which I thought was paced nicely. I did think, however, that the misunderstanding between North – who I found very cute – and Rory before they got together wasn’t really necessary. But, the two were rock-solid once they did become a couple.

Finally, I enjoyed the message Miller attempted to convey. Using Milton’s Paradise Lost as inspiration along with a strong dose of neuroscience and psychology, Free to Fall demonstrates the importance of choice and examines how people’s dependence on technology can lead to corporations manipulating their consumers.

A fantastic sci-fi novel, Free to Fall was released by HarperTeen in May 2014. 

Comments About the Cover: It kind of reminds me of Parallel’s cover, even though both of Miller's novels are standalones.