After the Fall - Kate Hart

After the Fall by Kate Hart
Genre: YA Realistic Fiction

Blurb (on back of book): Seventeen-year-old Raychel is sleeping with two boys: her overachieving best friend Matt…and his slacker brother, Andrew. Raychel sneaks into Matt’s bed after nightmares, but nothing ever happens. He doesn’t even seem to realize she’s a girl, except when he decides she needs rescuing. But Raychel doesn't want to be his girl anyway. She just needs his support as she deals with the classmate who assaulted her, the constant threat of her family’s eviction, and the dream of college slipping quickly out of reach. Matt tries to help, but he doesn’t really get it… and he’d never understand why she’s fallen into a secret relationship with his brother. The friendships are a precarious balance, and when tragedy strikes, everything falls apart. Raychel has to decide which pieces she can pick up – and which ones are worth putting back together. 

MY OPINION: ****

SPOILERS

This book had me heartbroken in tears by the end of Part 1 and I can't even voice how horrifying Part 2 was (in a good way).

I loved this book to pieces! It left me so sad and disappointed with how everything turned out in the end. I think it was honestly the ending that left me so upset and I couldn't just give the book five stars. However, I truly loved this book and the characters and everything that happened (except for one little tiny thing).

This book is about a girl named Raychel whose best friend, Matt, is starting to fall for her. However, she is involved with a case of assault with another guy though she denies it, and is falling for Matt's younger brother, Andrew, who I loved to pieces. Then a tragedy strikes and everything changes.

This book dealt with a lot of things, including rape and sexual assault, though it is really only lightly touched on compared to everything else in this book. A boy named Carson something-or-other forces her to "blow" him TWICE though he's a nice boy and doesn't really think he did anything wrong. She technically never really said no, but then again, she never said yes, which qualifies as rape.

I think my big problem with this book was this: it took on really serious topics and dealt with it lightly and barely went into it. It focused more on the less important things and I really think that it should have gone more into depth with the harder topics, including rape and assault and teenage alcoholism, etc.

I want to talk about the characters just a little bit.

Raychel. From just reading the blurb, I think I was under the impression that she was a quiet, smart, "good" girl but from the get-go, I could tell that that was not at all correct. She talks about hooking up with college guys, and while there's nothing really necessarily wrong with that, it's not in the stereotypical format of a good girl. I do understand that it said "Raychel is sleeping with two boys" but my innocent little brain didn't go as far as to think that she wasn't an amazingly great girl. Though that was misleading because I thought she was sleeping (like hooking up) with two boys). Turns out, that's not the case. To be completely honest, Raychel annoyed me half the time because she didn't seem to understand anything, she was oblivious, and she wasn't a great person in general. Although, she was strong and brave and she did apologize for the things that she did wrong, which I admired.

Matt. I can't talk about Matt too much because he just made me too angry. He was so ANNOYING. Not in a bad way but his overly nice personality (like mean girl nice) was so overwhelming and suffocating and I just wanted to throttle him at some points. He was always talking about how he liked Raychel as more than a friend to Raychel and how he was going to tell her but then he always got deterred or made distractions so that he didn't have to do it. He's a nice boy but he's also a jerk at the same time, which is hard to wrap my head around. My big problem with him was the way that he talked: like he cared about people's feelings but really didn't.

The thing is, throughout the book, I never saw any evidence that he and Raychel were best friends. They didn't have any of those best-friend qualities, like inside jokes, secrets, giggles, movies, quirks, or anything like that. It kind of deterred me from their whole relationship and in that sense, I didn't like Matt as much.

Andrew. What can I even say about him? He was drop-dead gorgeous, the ultimate "bad boy", the best character of the book. And of course, because he was the best person of the book, despite his flaws, the author had to kill him off.

That really threw me off because in the blurb, it never talked about a death of one of the best characters. Yes, it did mention tragedy but that can mean anything!

AND HE FELL OFF A CLIFF. Mainly because of Matt, despite how justified Matt and Raychel thinks he was.

I cried.

I never cry in books.

And it was all because Andrew and Raychel "hooked up" though it was so much more than that and Matt found out and got mad and...

I can't even think about it right now.

So I'm going to just stop there and wallow in the misery. I would recommend this book to readers looking for a more emotional read.

Main Character: Raychel, Matt
Sidekick(s): Andrew, etc
Villain(s): Death, misunderstanding, guilt, etc
Realistic Fiction Elements: This book was real to life.