The main problem with this book is that it may become too popular, inspiring a zany, Pynchon-esque singles club on the west tower of the Brooklyn Bridge where couples meet up and jaunt around the city and its environs for a day before… well, no spoilers. But before doing something else.

I don’t know that this is the sort of book I’d normally read, but I’m glad I did. It’s well written, and a nice character study of two pretty broken people near the end of their tethers. The switching perspectives between Henry and Christa worked well to move the story along and set the mood of being inside a person’s head who is committed to throwing themselves off a bridge and all that that entails. Which can obviously be a mood-dampener.

About halfway through I did get the feeling that I’d read something similar to this before, not the paean to New York City (though certainly there have been enough books, and there’s enough room for all of them, that are essentially love letters to New York), but the tale of suicide caught at the brink. It’s a little similar to (though less crowded than) Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down, the point at which I decided to give Nick Hornby a break for a bit. But I enjoyed the book. I’m not 100% sold on the entire plot and how the characters ended up after their one day reprieve, but I did clamp down my willing suspension of disbelief and enjoyed wondering how it was going to end for both of them for pretty much the whole story, as I knew nothing of the author’s prior work and didn’t know whether she’d twist a sadistic knife at the end or have them fly off on clouds of cotton candy and unicorns at the end.