Pub. Date- February 18th 2014 Publisher- MTV Books
Pages- 320 Genre- Contemporary/Young Adult Rating- 5 Stars
I received this courtesy of MTV Books through
Netgalley in return for an honest review.
"Are there any answers when someone you love makes a tragic choice?
Before and After. That's how Rowan Areno sees her life now. Before: she was a normal sixteen-year-old--a little too sheltered by her police officer father and her mother. After: everything she once believed has been destroyed in the wake of a shattering tragedy, and every day is there to be survived.
If she had known, on that Friday in March when she cut school, that a random stranger's shocking crime would have traumatic consequences, she never would have left campus. If the crime video never went viral, maybe she could have saved her mother, grandmother--and herself--from the endless replay of heartache and grief.
Finding a soul mate in Eli, a witness to the crime who is haunted by losses of his own, Rowan begins to see there is no simple, straightforward path to healing wounded hearts. Can she learn to trust, hope, and believe in happiness again?"
The most heart-wrenchingly sad and beautiful
in equal quantities that when I try to explain the love I feel for it everything hurts award goes to this book.
Laura Wiess has the most beautiful realistic way of writing that made the heart-break and hopelessness so present and over whelming without ever stopping the flow or pacing. Now yes this book is
incredibly sad but it’s not pointless sad, everything that happens is for a
reason and a lot of the emotions come from watching Rowan grow stronger and
dealing with the horrible things that occur in her life.
Rowan
starts the story being your average teenager who just wants to go out with her
friends be popular. Everything changes
for her when her Dad is the closest cop on duty to a horrible crime. Her dad is
only the closest because Rowan picked that Friday to skip school with a friend
and then in a chain of events everything goes wrong. The crime happens, a video
goes viral and nothing will ever be the same again. The whole plot of this magnificently
written book is all about Rowan’s healing and try to get her family back
together.
One
of the best elements of
this is the romance. The relationship between Rowan and Eli main focal point in
the sense that they meet and everything is made mystically better. This doesn’t happen in life; nobody is every
going to be a heart mega-bandaid. Laura Wiess plays this out perfect and realistically
both in a sense that Rowan and Eli do help heal each other but they don’t
solely rely on each other to the point where the whole story feels unhealthy.
As much as I
could go on and on about this for years just thinking about the story has made
me tear up. I did cry for an hour of my 2 hour reading (it’s way to good to put
down) so this isn’t the book to read on the bus to work, more of an in bed with
tissues and chocolate book. I really hope you’ll give this a read; it has
quickly become one of my top books of the year. I'm so looking forward to buying a physical copy of this and maybe some of Laura Wiess' other novels.
Have you read this? Will you do your heart a favour and do it?
(If you had read this, you should leave a comment so we can sob together, or let me know if you hated it)
(If you had read this, you should leave a comment so we can sob together, or let me know if you hated it)
Ahh, great review Katie! It made me remember the story all too much though...(which isn't really a bad thing.) I think this is going to be one of those books that just makes me tear up by reading the title!
ReplyDeleteI think it's always going to bring all the feels. I'm glad I could make you remember how great it is!
DeleteSo excited to read this!!
ReplyDeleteI hope you love it so much! When you read it you'll have to let me know so we can have a chat about it!
ReplyDelete