What This Theme Explores
Coming of Age and Self-Discovery in The Upside of Falling asks how young people peel away identities imposed by family history, expectation, and reputation to become someone they choose. For Becca Hart, this means testing the hard shell she built after her parents’ divorce and learning that vulnerability is not weakness. For Brett Wells, it means untangling ambition from obligation and deciding whether the “perfect son” and star athlete is really who he is. The novel suggests that real growth requires disillusionment, courage, and a willingness to risk the messiness of real connection.
How It Develops
At the outset, both protagonists live inside roles created for them. Becca keeps love safely contained in books and distance—she’d rather analyze romance than risk it. Brett, meanwhile, performs the version of himself that his father celebrates: focused, disciplined, and headed toward college football. Their fake-dating pact begins as a mutually beneficial cover, but it quietly destabilizes these identities.
As their arrangement pushes them into each other’s worlds—games, parties, late-night drives—they start to notice what those masks conceal. Becca finds that showing up for life, not just reading about it, exposes her fears but also expands her capacity for joy. Brett discovers that pleasure, kindness, and curiosity live beyond the tunnel of football, especially during their time at the arcade, where the social scoreboard disappears and a genuine friendship takes shape.
The breaking points arrive when inherited narratives crack. Brett’s discovery of his father’s affair destroys the myth of his family’s perfection and forces him to ask whether his dreams are truly his. Becca, choosing to confront her father rather than remain defined by his betrayal, reclaims agency over her story. By the end, their choice to be together is no longer about performance; it’s a declaration of who they’ve become and what they want, on their own terms.
Key Examples
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Becca’s early cynicism frames love as a hazard to be avoided, not a risk worth taking. In class, she reads Romeo and Juliet as cautionary, not romantic:
“No, it wasn’t worth it. Falling in love destroyed both of their lives. What is the point of loving someone when you’re certain you can’t be together?” This stance is the wall she must scale; the novel tracks her move from theoretical distance to lived experience.
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Brett’s prescribed identity emerges in conversations that treat his future as settled. His father’s directive clarifies the pressure:
“Playing college ball is going to be your priority once you graduate, Brett. Right now, in high school? This is your prime.” The tension between duty and desire propels Brett’s self-examination, asking whether excellence without ownership can ever feel like meaning.
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The arcade functions as a turning point because it strips away the performance of popularity and isolation. When Becca admits, “you’re different than I thought you’d be,” she names the gap between persona and person. Their unguarded ease here seeds the trust necessary for both to attempt authenticity elsewhere.
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Becca’s visit to her father marks a decisive step from pain as identity to pain as past. She says:
“I can’t live with this pain anymore. I can’t carry around this sadness because it’s stopping me from being the person I want to be. I . . . I can’t be that person if I still hate you.” Forgiveness becomes an act of self-definition; she chooses the future over a grievance that has been defining her present.
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After learning of the affair, Brett’s self-concept collapses—and clears. He confesses:
“It’s weird to think about, but it feels like my life hasn’t really been mine. I don’t even know if I like football, Becca. Or if I convinced myself I did because I had no other choice.” Naming this uncertainty frees him to rebuild a self unmoored from performance and parental script.
Character Connections
Becca Hart’s arc is a study in dismantling protective narratives. She begins by outsourcing love to fiction and avoiding situations that might confirm her worst fears. Through the fake relationship, she experiments with presence—showing up to games, parties, and difficult conversations—and discovers that vulnerability is not a threat to her identity but a path to it. Confronting her father is the culmination: she chooses to be someone guided by hope rather than a past hurt.
Brett Wells’s journey centers on sovereignty. His initial confidence masks a life lived in service to an inherited dream. The revelation of his father’s infidelity breaks the illusion that obedience guarantees stability. Brett’s growth lies not in rejecting football outright, but in reclaiming choice—measuring success by integrity and self-knowledge rather than statistics or approval.
Jenny McHenry serves as a foil who quietly mirrors the theme in miniature. Initially positioned as an antagonist, she later apologizes and admits she is “still figuring that out” regarding her sexuality. Her humility reframes high school reputation as a draft, not a final edit, underscoring the novel’s insistence that identity is iterative and bravely self-authored.
Symbolic Elements
Romance novels begin as Becca’s armor—love neatly bound, endings guaranteed, stakes controlled. As she starts risking real connection, her uneasy gesture of throwing some books into the lake captures her conflict: letting go of safety to make room for the unedited self. By story’s end, reading with Brett transforms the symbol from escape to enrichment, integrating imagination with lived intimacy.
Lovers’ Lake stands in for the rite-of-passage spaces where adolescents test boundaries and selves. For Becca, attending a party there breaks isolation and blurs the line between pretense and feeling, nudging the fake relationship toward something undeniable. The lake’s lore of teenage romance heightens the risk-reward calculus of growing up: exposure to embarrassment, and to wonder.
The arcade is a sanctuary of childhood nostalgia where scoreboards don’t determine worth. Its retro glow invites Becca and Brett to step out of their public roles and engage as curious, goofy, thoughtful people. In that playful anonymity, the groundwork for authentic identity—and love—takes root.
Contemporary Relevance
The novel resonates with today’s readers who navigate parental expectations, fractured families, and the relentless pressure to perform a brand of self at school and online. Becca’s impulse to retreat into fiction reflects how many cope with uncertainty, while Brett’s struggle to separate his dream from a parent’s dream captures a common tension around college, careers, and extracurriculars. The story affirms that adolescence is not about perfecting a persona but learning to tell the truth about what you want, even when that truth disrupts what others want for you.
Essential Quote
“It’s weird to think about, but it feels like my life hasn’t really been mine. I don’t even know if I like football, Becca. Or if I convinced myself I did because I had no other choice.”
This confession crystallizes the theme’s core: selfhood begins where performance ends. Brett’s uncertainty is not failure but the first honest measurement of his desires, and it models how acknowledging doubt can be the bravest step toward an authentic life.