3 Review(s)

"Laura Wiess's masterful prose kept me turning the pages. This is the first book in a very long time that made me say, 'Wish I'd written this'" (Ellen Hopkins, author of Crank, on Such a Pretty Girl). Laura Wiess captures the visceral emotion of a girl's journey from innocence to devastating loss and, ultimately, to a strange and unexpected kind of understanding-in this beautiful and painfully honest new novel. 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?