A review by novelheartbeat
In the After by Demitria Lunetta

4.0

4.5/5

Before was reality; the After, a nightmare.

In the After was fabulous! The world that Lunetta painted drew me in and I loved it!

I think the driving point in this book was the relationship between Amy and Baby. It was beautiful and real and had me rooting for them to succeed. Amy was very protective of Baby, but Baby was perfectly capable of holding her own as well. I absolutely LOVED the fact that they spoke in sign language! They had their own modified version and could hold entire conversations with nothing but their hands; even when they couldn’t see they could sign into each other’s hands. It was awesome! So there were very few quotations in the first half of the book because the conversations were all in italics. I can’t think of a single other book like that! Very cool.

Another important part: Them. Totally creepy, mindless killing machines. They flock to light and even the smallest sound. How terrible would it be to live in silence? To not even be able to whisper? And sometimes it really struck me how different the world was when Baby was concerned: i.e. She didn’t know what a horse was. It’s something you don’t really think about, and I think that made the world building even better because the author included small things like that.

I have to admit that Amy kind of annoyed me at times. She was rather arrogant and many times I just wanted to slap her.

So much of who I used to be was about being good in school and having friends who were good in school. We were, to put it simply, arrogant little know-it-alls. But I miss that.

You miss being a bitch? Okay, sure. Just the way she talked about herself and her life Before was enough to make me sure that I would have hated her. And the way she regarded Amber annoyed me, too (even though Amber kinda deserved it). Just because Amber didn’t know how to survive, Amy looked at her as being lesser and unworthy of life.

…having to deal with a self-centered dimwit can have deadly consequences.

Wow. I mean, I get it. It’s about survival of the fittest. But damn, get off your high horse. The girl can learn. Yet despite all that arrogance, she couldn’t figure things out.

Spoiler

It was OBVIOUS that the mark on Baby’s neck meant something, yet she was too dense to realize it. Rice had an obvious reaction to it, and covered it up more than once. If someone acted strangely to it, wouldn’t you question why?

I stared at her for a moment, her blonde hair barely covering the scar on her neck. I reached out and combed her hair with my fingers, arranging it over the mark, though I wasn’t entirely sure why.

Are you seriously that dumb? Ugh.

Rice was okay, but he didn’t have much of a personality. He was kinda just there for me. And the romance didn’t do much for me, either…but thankfully it didn’t play a very large role in the story.

You always have to give up some freedoms to live in any society.

New Hope was a full blown dystopian society. I suppose to live in harmony in a post-apocalyptic world there’d have to be some sort of control, but this town took it to the extreme. Pregnancy is a requirement, and you have no choice who you have children with. If you didn’t conform, you were drugged and thrown in a mental ward. It was insane!

In the last half, the story was laced with intermittent flashbacks. It made it super intriguing because all you get is snippets of Amy being in the hospital, drugged to oblivion for some horrible misdemeanor that she supposedly committed. But you have no idea what it is because even she doesn’t know! It was brilliantly done and had me gobbling up the story to find answers.

And oh boy, did I get answers. There’s a major twist in the story! I never would have guessed going into this novel.

Spoiler

I have to admit that I had questions about Them, and that some of it didn’t make sense – like how did they make a ship if they’re so dumb? – but I never thought that!

I was completely broadsided, and it was awesome! Lunetta sure knows how to throw her readers for a loop.

Favorite character: Kay. She was badass!

ASSESSMENT
Plot: 5/5
Writing style: 4.5/5
Originality: 4.5/5
Characters: 4/5
World-building: 5/5
Pace: 5/5
Cover: 4.5/5