A review by solaria
Afterlove by Tanya Byrne

dark emotional hopeful sad medium-paced
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.0

It's a case of liked the concept, didn't like the execution. 

The first act was good although I wish it built up a little more tension as it somewhat felt like the first act and second act were apart of two different books. 

The second act was very messy. It was paced poorly and very rushed. It felt like the author realised she didn't have enough pages to tell the story she wanted to so a lot got cut or blended together. The new characters that were introduced felt really basic as a result, they didn't get enough room to develop properly. I wanted to know so much more about them. I also hated how short the chapters were in the second act and how many breaks there were in most of these chapters. It just broke up the story for no reason when I felt it didn't need to. 

Spoilers ahead
Look, I know Ash fell in love with Poppy but I wish the author talked about how much she missed her family and friends more. I mean, she had been living with her family for her whole life and been friends with Adara for her entire school experience - and yet we only really get one liners about how she misses them. We get paragraphs about how much she misses Poppy which was nice but she only met Poppy a few months ago. I liked Poppy but still, a little more depth to Ashana would've been nice.
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