This is a mystery about what happened and who is to blame for teenager Olivia's life threatening fall. It is told from the points of view of Olivia and her mother, Abi and takes the reader back and forth in time until the mystery is solved. After her fall, Olivia is kept on life support because she is pregnant and they are trying to keep her alive until the baby can be born.

This was a quick read and the mother and Olivia's boyfriend, Derek, were likable, but I could have done without the exclamation points; they seemed unnecessary. I also felt like some of the characters were one-dimensional. I wish I could have liked this more than I did. It needed more meat.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.

Gonna be honest - I didn’t make it very far before giving up on this book. And by not very far, I mean chapter two. So here’s my beef: EVERYTHING doesn’t need to be vividly described! Seemed like every other word was an adjective which really slowed down the actual story. Do we really need to know the hospital meeting room smelled like floral potpourri? Are you really noticing the gold flecks in someone’s eyes while you’re waiting to hear if your child is alive?
Although I found it obvious and distracting, I was planning on powering through, if for no other reason, to give a fair review. Then I read the first few words of the beginning of chapter two - “The yellow school bus...”. Do they come in other colors? Does it matter?!
I was done.

Thank you to Gallery Book and NetGalley for an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was very sad to me; while not a whole lot of plot twists - you can pretty much see what is coming - what happens to Olivia and the decisions that her mother has to make, are devastating.

Good read, but sad.

When it was all said and done, I liked this book, and so I will score it 3.5 stars out of five. That being said, there were a few times in the first third of the book where I felt frustrated- with the writing, with the characters. It was too, I don't know, simpering for me at times. But over time the story and suspense picked up and either it got better or I overlooked it more. Either way, I was definitely fully in and wanting to see how the book would conclude and I was satisfied with the ending.

A mother willing to go to the ends of the world for her daughter, even though her daughter is brain dead, pregnant, and going to die. I think many mothers (and fathers) would feel the same way. The need to know why she ended up the way she is becomes so strong that it takes on its own life.

Abi finds help in Anthony and starts asking questions, following leads, and making waves with people who’d rather be left out of the entire thing. There were times that I wondered if Abi had bitten off more than she could handle but she was so strong, so determined, and so unwilling to be pushed off the trail. I loved that she didn’t give up, she didn’t let it go, and she didn’t take everyone for their word. She questioned, she pushed, and she pulled at each small hint of what happen and was soon unraveling the entire story. I wondered if I could be so strong when facing the loss of my daughter and hoped that I would never have to find out.

Christina McDonald did an amazing job of keeping the teenagers as teenagers. They hid things from their parents, gossiped about each other to their friends, snuck out and misbehaved just as real teenagers did. Yes, some of the teenagers were mean people but that is the high school life and I loved that she didn’t make them all pretty and perfect. The adults in the story were also real. They were wanting to protect their kids, themselves, and distance themselves from the horror of having a brain dead, pregnant daughter.

This is a great book. I picked it up, kept going back to it, and even now after finishing it I can’t let it go. I continue to think about the story, wonder how many parents have found themselves in similar positions and thankful that my teenagers are healthy, happy, and alive.

Christina MacDonald’s The Night Olivia Fell is a riveting story about a single mother and her daughter and how secrets and lies can have devastating results. Everyone becomes suspect. Whom can you trust? How do you keep a loved one safe? These questions and more are explored.

This book was a classic thriller, and I loved it for that. I didn’t see the end twist coming directly, and some of the journey was pretty heart breaking (like the revelations in the later chapters that you knew Olivia never got to tell her mom, and that her mom never got to tell her). I can see why this book is getting so much hype!

Let me just say, this books totally lived up to its hype! Christina McDonald's The Night Olivia Fell is a past-paced, thriller that keeps you wondering who you can trust and who is lying to your face. I was unable to put this down until I knew exactly what happened to Olivia!

This story is about a single mother, Abi Knight, and her daughter, Olivia and how one day their lives coming crashing apart. One night the phone rings and a Abi's worst nightmare begins.

“Hello, is this Abagail Knight?” The voice —a man’s—was low and tight, coiled like a viper about to strike. “Yes.” “This is Portage Point Hospital. It’s about your daughter, Olivia. I’m afraid there’s been an accident.” 

When Abi arrives at the hospital, the doctor tells her that Olivia has brain damage and will never be able to wake up. But they have to keep her alive because she is pregnant! This devastates Abi, but it gives her time that she needs to figure out what truly happened to her daughter. 

What I truly appreciated about McDonald's book is the story being told from both perspectives, both from Olivia and Abi. From flashbacks of Olivia and chapters from Abi on her goal to discover the truth. 

Throughout reading this book, I was cautious of every character, dissecting their language and wondering if we could trust them.  This is brilliantly done by McDonald, with her ability to blanket the tension and suspense throughout her writing. 

I don't want to spoil this ending so I won't give this away, but you really will not see this ending coming. It was both moving and a stunning finale to many of its characters. I didn't think I would enjoy a book about a loving mom searching for answers, toxic relationships or even the investigation for her daughter, but it was so unbelievably captivating. 

I couldn't put this book down and I know this story will stay with me for a long time, in both a good way, but even a terrifying way too! I’m excited to read more from Christina McDonald! 

Thank you NetGalley, Christina McDonald, and Gallery Books for my copy of The Night Olivia Fell in exchange for an honest review.

Abigail (Abi) Knight has just been awakened by a call from the hospital saying her 17-year-old daughter, Olivia, has been in an accident. Abi learns that she had suffered a blow to her head and fell into some water. She is now brain dead but on life support because she’s pregnant. They hope the baby will continue to grow. Seeing Olivia so still in the hospital bed, she notices her bracelet that she always wore is missing and purple bruises line her wrist in its place.

Olivia had recently gone to the nearby University of Washington on a school bus with her friend, Madison, and her boyfriend, Tyler, along with other classmates interested in attending the college in another year. There, she sees a girl from another school who looks exactly like her. They chat and Olivia learns the girl’s name is Kendall Montgomery.

Abi is a single mother who never married Olivia’s father. Abi claims that he died just before she learned she was pregnant. Abi’s own mother committed suicide when she was small leaving Abi’s sister, Sarah, to raise her. Abi has a good job as an accountant and has always been very close with Olivia. Even though she doesn’t seem to get much help from the police, she is determined to find out what happened that night.

We learn more about Olivia’s friends and how it all builds to a stunning climax. This is a really good thriller and an even better heartbreaking story of a mother’s love for her daughter. Don’t miss it. This one is a keeper.

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The writing for this thriller was quite simplistic (I’m not saying this is a bad thing, quite contrary), and suits the mystery, as you don’t want the plot to get sidetracked by flowery prose. Instead, the writing was taunt and there was a never-ending mix of twists and turns at every corner. I can forgive the fact that the daughter was pregnant (as it seems like it needed to be a plot device to keep the daughter on life support throughout the whole investigation due to the baby), but it always seems like whenever a daughter is keeping secrets from an overprotective parent it means that they’re either doing drugs or pregnant so it can get a bit cliché.

There were a lot of characters in the book, and since many of them were unreliable or keeping secrets, that means that every person was a suspect until proven innocent. Although I had guessed who had pushed Olivia over the bridge long before it was revealed, I still found the book very enjoyable. Since this was more of a domestic thriller, there wasn’t the sort of urgency you’d see in another type of thriller (as in there was no serial killer on the loose and no one was trying to actively STOP Abi from investigating in any real threatening way).

But I appreciated how the book explored a mother-daughter dynamic that was both asphyxiating as it was tender and loving. We find out in the book exactly why Abi was such an overprotective parent, but how that behaviour is what led to a series of events to occur in Olivia’s life that ultimately led to her falling from the bridge.

I was satisfied with the end, although the epilogue veered towards a Lifetime movie ending of sorts, it had a lot of heart and soul that sucker punched even the most cynical of readers into wishing that Olivia could’ve survived her fatal fall.

The Night Olivia Fell is filled with emotion, mostly of the heartbreaking kind, and it is an interesting read, but there are some lags in the story. There is a mystery, but I would consider this one more domestic drama than suspense as Abi deals with the shock of losing her daughter while also learning that she's going to be a grandmother. On top of that, she's rather closed off to most people and afraid of letting anyone in, so there's that to overcome too. On the mystery side of this one, the author does give us more than enough plausible suspects to keep us guessing, but most are a little too out there. In fact, it began to feel like almost everyone in Olivia's life had some reason to kill her - not all of them were logical reasons, but reasons just the same.The answer to who and even why was pretty clear early in the book, so the big reveal wasn't a big surprise for me. While this story is a little too predictable for my taste, the writing is good and the author shows talent. I'll be interested to see where she goes from here.

Thank you Gallery Books and Netgalley for a copy of the eARC in exchange for a fair review.


Abi is woken up by a phone call to tell her that her daughter has been in an accident. Abi is stunned when she arrives at the hospital to find that Olivia is brain dead and on life support. Olivia had fallen off a bridge, but Abi is really thrown when they tell her that they can't take her off life support because she is pregnant.


Now Abi, is determined to figure out what happened to Olivia. But she can't seem to get help from the police, and all of Olivia's friends seem to be hiding things. Will she ever figure it out? Who is the father of her baby? Why was she out that night? What else was Olivia hiding?


The blurb says for fans Reconstructing Amelia. I have to admit they are similar. Some differences, but told in a similar manner. We get alternating viewpoints, one is Olivia and the other Abi. One is clearly the present and the other is telling from Olivia's POV all the events that led up that night.

I couldn't stop reading it, and I will fully admit that I was crying at the end. It was one that I really hated that there couldn't be a better ending, but in it's own way it was still a beautiful ending.


I have to say that while I did guess what happened, I only guessed shortly before the reveal. I guessed wrong at least twice before. I loved Abi, and I totally really loved the fact that I could feel the love between mother and daughter. It is part of what made me cry at the end. As a parent I completely connected with Abi, and how she felt, and everything she went through. So if you are a parent and read this be prepared for all the feels.

This book was just okay, like my 2 star rating indicates. With the cover looking like a Ruth Ware novel, I thought I'd like this one based on that visual alone, but the teenage angst, clunky dialogue and Hallmark movie channel story line just wasn't my thing.
On a positive note, I thought the writing was excellent when setting a scene, and read like a movie script.
I have a feeling I will be in the minority on this one.

Thank you so much to Gallery Books and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I have nothing but great things to say about this book. This was an excellent book from a debut author and I enjoyed every minute of it. I sincerely hope she has more works planned for the future because this was excellent!

Abi is startled awake by the phone ringing in the middle of the night and she immediately knows something is wrong. They tell her her daughter Olivia has been in an accident and is in the hospital. Abi rushes to get there and finds out that her daughter is in a coma and essentially brain dead, she had fallen off of a bridge and the injuries were extreme. The doctors tell her the only reason they're keeping her on life support is because Olivia is pregnant, which Abi had no idea about. As Abi starts to look into this "accident" more she wonders not only what happened to Olivia on that bridge, who was she there with and who is the father of her unborn grandchild?

This was such an emotional story and I loved reading it. It had plenty of suspense and a great twist that I didn't even see coming. I loved how the story shifted between Abi in the present day and Olivia in the past before the accident happened so you got a picture of everything that happened prior to Olivia falling off the bridge. I loved how through the whole book you're introduced to new characters and you're wondering along with Abi whether they had something to do with Olivia's accident or not.

Excellent, excellent book and Christina McDonald did a great job for her first book!

The Night Olivia fell is an awesome book! I read this book in one sitting. I thoroughly enjoyed this suspense novel – knowing the Olivia was brain dead at the beginning helped ease some of the pain of finding out what happened to her (I am a big crier).

Abi wakes to a phone call telling her that her daughter, Olivia, has been in an accident. However, when Abi arrives at the hospital and sees her daughter, she finds that the information she receives doesn't seem to add up with how her daughter looks. As only a parent can do, she starts on a mission to find out the truth, although thwarted many times, she refuses to give up, even when it means confronting the pain from her past.

The “flashbacks” from Olivia’s perspective gave the book a well rounded out feel and completed the story, as well as Abi’s memories from the past. The cast of supporting characters were well thought out and each really enhanced the story. I had several theories that keep changing as I read further and further in the book, and none of them turned out to be correct – which is awesome and a little disappointing at the same time! I love it when a book keeps me guessing until the very end!

Congratulations on a wonderful novel Christina!

I really enjoyed this book, but I think I would have liked it more if it had been marketed as a young adult mystery/suspense novel rather than adult. I think part of the reason I felt this way was because half the book was narrated by Olivia, a teenager, and the mystery surrounding her fall was full of typical teenage angst and drama. Some of this drama lead to subtle red herrings that fooled me into thinking I could guess who the killer was more than once.

This was a heavily character-driven mystery; most of the teenage characters were well-developed and complex. Madison's snarkiness and impulsive anger reminded me of a girl I knew in high school, and Kendall's instability reminded me of a different girl I knew in high school. However, I thought the adult characters could have all used some more development. Abi was immature and impulsive, Gavin was one-dimensional and an amalgam of politician stereotypes, and it felt like Sarah's only purpose was to throw in the story of Abi's terrible childhood, which also could have used some work.

Overall, the writing was solid, especially in the Olivia-narrated chapters, the story was suspenseful, and the pace perfect. I wasn't able to guess the ending, which made me like the book a lot more. I felt that some of the red herrings were introduced and dismissed far too quickly, but that's something that I can see the author improving on in her next book. The characters and some of the backstories could have also used some more work, but I think Christina McDonald has great potential and I'm looking forward to her next book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Gallery Books for a free advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

The Night Olivia Fell is a book that is EXTREMELY hard to put down!! Full of emotion and suspense, McDonald keeps the reader engrossed from the first page to the last.

Abi Knight, a single mother, has raised her daughter, Olivia, by herself from the start. Though extremely protective, she and Olivia have always been close, but there are secrets between them and those secrets end up costing both of them dearly.

Olivia has just finished high school, and at 17 is chafing under her mother's constant hovering presence. She loves her mom deeply, but wants some independence. Abi is having a hard time letting go.

Awakened at 4:30 AM by a phone call telling her that Olivia has been in an accident, Abi arrives at the hospital to be told that Olivia fell off a bridge and is brain dead. What's more, Olivia's pregnant! Despite heavy bruises on her wrists, the police seem hesitant to investigate Olivia's death. Determined to find out how and why her daughter died, Abi keeps prodding the police and searching for the truth on her own.

The story is seamlessly told in Abi's voice in present time, and in Olivia's voice in flashbacks leading up to the fall. Olivia too, was searching for the truth; she wanted to know who her father is, and why her mother lied to her about him.

A quick, suspenseful and heart wrenching read.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Gallery books for allowing me to read a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. All opinions stated here are my own.

Book Review - THE NIGHT OLIVIA FELL
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Told in two different point of views - Olivia’s pre-accident and Abi post accident, the story is pieced together as we go back and forth. Abi is a fiercely loyal mom who has some elements of being a Loreli Gilmore type except she’s strict, serious and doesn’t have much of her own life😬. Olivia is a somewhat typical teen who wants to be more independent and trusted. I read this in two days because I was curious what was going to happen. At times far fetched with some convenient coincidences, the story did move along on and it wasn’t overly twisty. Sometimes I get annoyed when the author tries to continually misdirect and the plot twists are never ending. That wasn’t the case and I actually appreciated that. ⁣
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I would definitely recommend this especially to someone looking for a good page turner.
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Thank you to @netgalley @gallerybooks for the free copy in exchange for an honest review. The Night Olivia Fell is out February 5th! ⁣
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The Night Olivia Fell is a fast-paced thriller with a unique concept. Abi’s world is shattered when she receives a call in the middle of the night reporting that her teenage daughter Olivia has fallen off of a bridge. She is now brain dead, but cannot be taken off life support since she is pregnant! As Olivia is kept alive in order to hopefully bring her baby to term, Abi begins to investigate what went on that night, as she knows it wasn’t simply a fall as the police have concluded.

This is a very consuming novel that has its true strength in the emotional aspect. It was heart wrenching to watch Abi learn to love the prospect of her new grandchild, whilst also having to accept that the baby surviving means that Olivia dies. I truly felt the love between mother and daughter in this novel as one of the stronger themes is motherhood and what it means to be family. Christina McDonald has written complex, likeable characters that will have you routing for them through the entire book.

As Abi takes on the investigation herself, she gets to know her daughter in a new way. The investigation leads to new information about Olivia’s boyfriend, friends, biological family, and members of the community. There’s many suspects and surprises that build suspense. What’s stopping me from giving it five stars is that it is somewhat predictable as a thriller. I figured out the ending, which isn’t always a problem, but with all of the buildup, I was hoping for more of a shock factor here. That said, I loved reading this book and the descriptions of love brought me to tears as much as the heartbreaking moments! Highly recommend!

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Happy #pubday to The Night Olivia Fell by @christinamac79 🎉 I decided to go into this book blind by not reading the synopsis or any reviews and just chose it based on genre. Best idea ever, because I’ve really enjoyed this book! It’s perfect for mystery/thriller lovers and fans of @sarahpekkanen and @greer.hendricks ❤️ Thank you to @netgalley @christinamac79 and @gallerybooks for my review copy!