After Series - Anna Todd
8:56 PM
Anyone who knows me can easily guess that I have given in to the After books by Anna Todd. However, anyone who realllyy knows me also knows that I have read those books back when they were only One Direction fan fiction stories on Wattpad since I have an undeniable love for the band. But my undeniable love for them and the fact that I've read these books over five times doesn't mean they're the best books in the world. Let me explain.
As of right now, there are currently five books: After, After We Collided, After We Fell, After Ever Happy, and Before. The four first ones follow a timeline, from the day Tessa and Hardin meet to the day they end up together. The story is told in both point of views but focuses mostly on Tessa. The fifth book, Before, follows Hardin's disturbed past by giving a voice to all the troubled characters we meet along the first four books. I will post an entire review on that one later since it's slightly different.
If you don't know the story of these books, it goes like this. Tessa Young lives in the state of Washington and is starting her first year of college about two hours away from Seattle and from her boyfriend. Her roommate is strange. She has weird friends and always wants to party, but Tessa gives in and starts following her. However, following her means meeting new people, and Tessa meets Hardin, college bad boy with tattoos and piercings everywhere, with a disturbed past and thousands of secrets.
Hardin is English. He was sent to America with his dad by his mom after causing too much trouble back in the UK, and he's unhappy. He's moody. He drinks a lot. But one night, he makes a bet with his friends to see how long it's going to take him to score with Tessa; to score with a virgin. But Hardin has a sensitive side and he quickly starts falling in love with Tessa. He can't quite live up to her expectations because of his past and his problems, but he tries really hard, and somehow it becomes enough for her. They move in together, and he gets her the internship of her dreams, but his problems surface again and Tessa finds out about the bed. Then again, what does up must come down.
I'm not going to spoil the whole series for you, because the plot itself is pretty darn good. The plot twists and turns throughout the four books of the series are very unpredictable, and they were very well done. Everything seems to be calculated despite the fact that Anna Todd has repeated multiple times that she just wrote her stories without a plan.
The characters are described like the boys from One Direction, so if you want a clear image of what they look like, you can just Google them. But you can easily read the books without even being a fan because there is no mention or allusion to the band whatsoever. Their faces are used for the characters, but nothing else. On the same train of thought, the character development is impeccable. Tessa goes from this straight A, perfect student to a girl who likes a challenge and doesn't mind trying out new things. She falls in love with the type of man she never thought she'd like, but she realizes along the way that they were similar in a lot of ways. And Hardin, of course, turns from this bad boy with no self respect to a man who starts seeing the good in himself. They both change for the best, and the story really reflects how they manage to get to point A to point B.
Unlike a lot of books, these are not "blank" books, which means that you can have a clear image of descriptions without feeling like everything is blank. It's not a very complex book, but the descriptions are good and there aren't any plot holes or major missing points.
Where things go wrong is when it comes to the writing. Anna Todd has a lot of imagination, but she just can't write. The books should have had so much more editing to remove all the "I do this" and "I do that" sentences that just drive me completely insane. The grammar and the punctuation isn't bad, but the books are written in the most simple vocabulary ever and could be read by first grade students – I'm not joking. The book has so much potential when it comes to the story, but the writing used ruins it all. I mean, there are barely any abbreviations! Reading "I am uncertain" and "I am ready" and "I" and "I am" all the time (yes, I'm slowly getting angry) quickly gets old.
If, however, you can look past that, you will probably enjoy the series. If you've enjoyed Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire, the After series is similar, and another plus is that each book is very long, so you have enough for a couple of days.
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