After by Amy Efaw

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 Weekend Review

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After by Amy Efaw

This is the tale about a high school freshman with the whole world ahead of her. Devon is fifteen, bright, and athletic. She loves soccer and has a future in the Olympics ahead of her. And then the unthinkable happens. Although it covers pieces of Devon’s past, this is truly the story about what happens after.

From the first few pages, we notice a few things.

1. A baby was left in a dumpster.

2. Devon is bleeding heavily.

Within minutes of the start, Devon is taken into custody. Her world is forever changed.

Efaw doesn’t go out of her way to make Devon a sympathetic character. She doesn’t gloss over the reality of what happened. Devon did this and she is facing the punishment for it.

There is something about the way that Devon is written, something about her desperation, her being that tugs at the heartstrings despite what she did. You want her to suffer for what she did to the child, but at the same time you want her to be okay.

There is a line in another review that I think exemplifies her pain. It doesn’t excuse her actions, but it does remind me of the impression I got while reading. "She strives to be everything that her mom isn't - strong, independent, reliable, and definitely not a teen mother like her."*

Devon has issues she needs to work through. She needs to face herself and what she did, but she also needs to see that she is not alone and that she doesn’t have to be a completely different person than her mother to be a better person.

In the majority of reviews about After, they talk about the ending being too sudden. I think it’s better for being the way it is. More human, less fiction.

All in all, I loved this book. Not my usual fare, but it was enjoyable, heartbreaking, and well written. I will be on the lookout for more by Amy Efaw.

*Nely, in a book review from her blog.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

YA Tuesday Review - Cloaked by Alex Flinn

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YA Tuesday Review

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Cloaked by Alex Flinn

Unlike her previous YA novel, Beastly, Alex Flinn’s Cloaked is a re-imagined telling about more than one cherished fairy tale. Using the stories of The Frog Prince, The Six Swans, The Elves and the Shoemaker and more, Cloaked tells the story of a modern day teenager thrust into seeing a world beyond his imagination and the journey to find a missing prince.

This is the tale of Johnny, a teenage boy who works to run his family’s failing shoe repair store. An encounter with a visiting princess sets Johnny on a quest to find the princess’s missing brother—who had been cursed into the form of a frog. If he succeeds, the princess will marry him and provide riches--more than enough for Johnny's mother to stop working two jobs. At first he doesn’t believe any of her stories. In an attempt to persuade him, he is given a simple cloak. But the cloak, it seems, isn’t so simple after all.

Using the cloak to travel, Johnny goes off in search of the Frog Prince, meets a family who had been turned into swans, is helped by a fox who wished to be human again, runs from witches, battles giants with the help of his best friend Meg, and falls in love in the process.

But most importantly, Johnny is finally able to find exactly where he belongs. 

Though the story is at times clichéd, it was a fun tale about life and love. I couldn’t help but root for Johnny, pray he saved the swans and the fox, and hope he realized that his best friend loved him. The ending had a few unexpected pieces, but the story tied together well.

A great read and one I will revisit in the future.