BOOK REVIEW
The minute I start a good book, I'm completely and utterly consumed and won't be able to function until I finish. That’s exactly what happened when I started After – I lived, breathed and bathed in it for 4 days. I started with the Wattpad version actually struggling to try and not picture 1 Direction (if your a first timer - Anna Todd started off writing Wattpad fanficition before After took off). A world wind of epic proportions, After is everything I ever want in a novel.
The minute we met Hardin I was hooked. The brooding, sarcastic man that he is, the stereotypical bad boy we all want to secretly know and love. Being fiction as opposed to fantasy, what amazed me with After was the amount of content and drama that is jam packed into each novel, necessarily soo and it still feels natural and perfect. Hardin in book one nails the telling you what you want to hear vs. pushing you away its painfully semantic.
Tessa and Hardin, I don’t even know where I should start, love love love love that’s the main thing that comes to mind. Their relationship broke me, it literally pulls your heart out of your chest, throws it, smashes to tiny pieces and then puts it back together agonizingly slowly in the best possible way. Reading that back, I question my sanity for wanting to read such a thing, but it is sooo beautiful. It is the perfect amount of angst, love and soo much more. It’s the relationship that shouldn’t work but does.
I also appreciate how it depicts the ugly side to love. Relationships take work and commitment, their more than the hand holding or working to fight a huge battle against the bad guy. Sometimes the bad guy is the demons of your past and present and how they interfere with friendships and relationships. This is huge theme throughout the entire series, seeing them both overcome their hardships separately and then being able to build a relationship together. The powerful statement I found was how despite them both being drawn to each other like magnets and unable to part with each other, when Tessa and Hardin finally took plunge to grow on themselves separately they had the strength to build a healthy relationship.
Zed was the complete bane of my existence, he was kinda like Tamlin, (A Court of Thornes & Roses) on a surface level he was kind and caring but there’s a monster waiting to be set free. I was a little disappointed the amount of Zed that was cut out of the books, the Wattpad version gave more context. Especially surrounding his girlfriend Rebecca and Professor Soto, in the book it felt a little haphazard having them in it without the deeper explanation. In that sense I was glad I read the Wattpad first, because I understood all the subtle hints. A part in the Wattpad version I loved was the Professor Soto concert and following Hardin fight. Him walking in to hear Tessa saying Zeds name in her sleep made a lot more sense knowing it was after the concert they had been at.
Every part of the After series I adored, I was in a constant state of dying to know what was going to happen next. I think it's safe to this is one of my all time favourites. It feels wrong to love a relationship that is borderline sadistic at times. I kinda of look it at like the lottery, in its variable-ratio you don’t win every time but the reason there is a chance of winning big is the reason you keep going back. After is like winning the lottery the highs are high and the lows can be pretty low but the value of knowing how intense, hot, mind blowing the story is, is why it's impossible to stop reading.
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