A Reader's Heart

‘In the After’ starts in a world filled with intrigue, suspense and silence. There’s that sense of desperate urgency, of deep sadness and of trying to live in a world that’s so different then what the characters in the novel have ever known. ‘In the After’ was relentless with its action and adventure. And, even though I went into this book have no expectations at all, it was a book that I ended up not being able to put down.

The world was what interested me most about this book. There was this feeling inside me that just wanted to scream in horror and, at the same time, I felt so much empathy for the characters. One wrong sound would attract the very element that the characters never wanted anywhere near them because it meant a quick, painful and horrifying death. This world was built on a lack of trust and survival of the fittest. If I had been a character in this book, I would have been eaten.

Amy was definitely a character with strong survival instincts. She was emotionally strong, brave and loyal. She was also lonely and desperate for human contact and even Baby, her constant companion, wasn’t enough for her. It was searching for that human contact that had her finding herself in some precarious situations. Her attributes was what made her such a likable character to me.

There was a slight romantic element between Amy and one of the other characters. I wouldn’t say it was anything remotely like instant love, because the characters were too busy just trying to stay alive. It was so refreshing not to have characters falling all over themselves at the first meeting.

The interesting thing about this book was the way the back story written. I loved having the chapters in a ‘before’ and ‘after’ perspective. It let me know about previous events and how the new world evolved into how it was now. What was even more brilliant was the way it showed how Amy had a relatively normal life until ‘They’ came.

But even more than that, it was like there were two separate stories being told. One was the ‘before’ and ‘after’ and the other, that came later, was ‘after’ and ‘before in the after’. I know how weird that sounds, but I don’t know of any other way to describe it that wouldn’t give part of the story line away.

‘In the After’ made me think. It made me wonder about the secrets that came to light as the story developed. As you can tell, I really enjoyed this book and possibly more than I thought I was going to, because I, well, was expecting it to be a normal sci-fi book that dealt with aliens, but it was so much more than that.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes sci-fi and flesh-eating monsters.