Appearance vs. Reality
What This Theme Explores
Appearance vs. reality in The Upside of Falling probes how people curate personas to survive pressure, avoid pain, and control how they’re seen. The novel asks what happens when those glossy surfaces collide with truths that won’t stay buried—about family, love, and self-worth. It interrogates whether a fake can turn real, and whether honesty can outlast the fallout of exposure. Above all, it questions the cost of living for optics instead of authenticity.
How It Develops
The theme takes root in the story’s inciting deception: Becca Hart and Brett Wells agree to a fake relationship to manage how others perceive them. At first, the ruse is a simple social tool—Becca shields herself from ridicule and pity, while Brett feeds the image of a well-adjusted, popular son. Their public pose is clean and convenient; the reality beneath it is fearful, messy, and private.
As their act stretches on, performance blurs into truth. The two begin to risk vulnerability, and the staged affection makes room for genuine care. Meanwhile, the broader architecture of appearances around them—especially the spotless Wells family brand—begins to splinter. The sight of Thomas Wells with another woman punctures Brett’s belief in his family’s myth, proving that polished façades can’t contain all the fissures underneath.
The final movement exposes what the story has been building toward: surfaces that once felt protective become cages. At the hotel’s grand opening, the Wellses’ cultivated image collides with public revelation, and the family’s carefully marketed perfection implodes. In counterpoint, Becca and Brett drop the pretense and choose real connection, suggesting that truth can survive, even flourish, once the performance ends.
Key Examples
-
The fake relationship’s birth: Cornered by a taunt in the hallway, Becca claims she already has a boyfriend to shut down a condescending classmate. The lie buys social safety but instantly creates a gap between who she is and who she must appear to be, forcing her to manage a fiction that will soon expose her deeper fears about love and loss. Brett’s decision to join the act shows how appearances can be mutually beneficial—and mutually risky.
-
Brett’s “perfect” life: On paper he is the golden boy—captain, popular, and heir to a respected family. In reality, he lives under intense expectations, channeling his father’s unrealized ambitions while suppressing his own doubts. The contrast reveals how external success can be a mask that hides not only pain, but also the absence of choice.
-
The Wells family façade: The community sees generosity, unity, and a storybook marriage. Privately, infidelity and silence corrode that image; Willa Wells endures the dissonance while Thomas maintains appearances. Their household becomes a case study in how the performance of perfect love can enable secrecy rather than protect the people inside it.
-
The public unraveling: At the glamorous hotel opening, the Wellses’ brand is on full display—until a confrontation in the parking lot bursts the bubble. The spectacle turns private harm into public knowledge, demonstrating how thin the membrane is between presentation and truth. The setting’s glitter only sharpens the humiliation, underscoring the story’s core point: real things eventually show.
Character Connections
Becca begins as someone who trusts fictional love and dismisses real-life romance, projecting cynicism to guard the wounds from her parents’ divorce. The fake dating scheme forces her to test the wall she’s built; as she lets feeling in, her outer pose becomes untenable. Her journey argues that honesty about hurt, not the denial of it, is what makes real love possible.
Brett most boldly embodies the theme: immaculate on the outside, quietly burdened within. His obedience to his father’s narrative—athlete, leader, role model—keeps the family’s image intact, even as he senses that image is false. When he witnesses his father’s betrayal and stops pretending, he chooses reality over approval, accepting the fallout to reclaim his agency.
As a unit, the Wells family dramatizes how reputation management can eclipse emotional truth. Their public giving and polished marriage mask the private costs of secrecy—resentment, shame, and isolation. The family’s collapse shows that a “perfect” image can function as both shield and weapon, protecting status while wounding intimacy.
Jenny McHenry performs confidence and cruelty, but her barbs conceal loneliness and regret about a lost friendship. Once her posture cracks, the novel reframes her as another teenager trapped by expectations—proof that the performance culture of high school hurts the performers, too.
Symbolic Elements
Romance novels: For Becca, the books offer love with guardrails—predictable, curated, and safe. They symbolize an aesthetic of perfection she can control, in contrast to real relationships that demand risk and honesty. The moment she privileges lived feeling over scripted endings marks her shift from appearance to reality.
Hart’s Cupcakes: The cheerful shop is sweetness built from sorrow, founded after Amy Hart’s divorce. Its bright presentation covers a history of pain, yet it also transforms that pain into sustenance and community. The bakery suggests that appearance isn’t always a lie; it can be a crafted vessel for surviving reality.
The hotel grand opening: A stage for prestige and polish, it literalizes the book’s obsession with spectacle. When the Wells family scandal erupts there, the setting turns into an ironic mirror—opulence framing exposure, marketing giving way to truth. The event’s gloss amplifies the rupture.
Contemporary Relevance
In an age shaped by social media feeds, curated personas, and the pressure to “perform” stability, the novel’s anxieties feel immediate. Teenagers and adults alike recognize how metrics and optics can eclipse feeling, making vulnerability seem dangerous. The Upside of Falling counters that logic: it argues for the brave, costly work of truth-telling, showing that connection thrives not in the highlight reel but in the unedited cut. It’s a reminder that what we hide often owns us—and what we name can free us.
Essential Quote
“My mom doesn’t have to pester me about being in a relationship because I’m in one.”
I waited for the ground to begin to shake. For the walls to cave and the ceiling to follow until we were standing in a pile of rubble and LIAR was burned into my forehead.
This moment captures the instant a protective lie becomes a personal threat; Becca feels the structure of her world tremble under the weight of a false front. The hyperbolic imagery—rubble, collapse, a branded forehead—turns social performance into bodily danger, foreshadowing the novel’s argument that lies about who we are will eventually demand a reckoning.