By Anna Todd
5 Stars
After by Anna Todd is about a girl named Tessa who has the perfect life, and the rest of her life planned out by her mother. She already knows that her best friend turned boyfriend, Noah, and herself will be happily married together right after she finishes college-but everything changes when she actually gets to college. When Tessa reaches her dream college, she instantly realizes how different everyone is from her. Her roommate has a peculiar friend group with everyone just wanting to get together. One friend, in particular, Hardin Scott, comes to Tessa’s attention for being so ignorant and rude to everyone. Hardin likes to keep to himself and go from girl to girl never really opening up to them. You would think this shouldn’t be a problem for Tessa since she has a boyfriend, but no. This just attracts Tessa to him even more, being disloyal to Noah. Despite their differences, Hardin and Tessa always seem to find a way to each other and eventually are in a relationship which is the most toxic thing ever. Perfect Tessa and troubled Hardin with a horrible past who is a very mean drunk due to his father, and gets drunk constantly could not be more different and are fighting constantly. They fight constantly but are both sure they are made for each other At the end of the book, Tessa learns the biggest secret that Hardin kept from her-which leads to the next book. This book used to be a One Direction fanfiction that was first published on WattPad but characters were changed due to copyright purposes (Harry Styles turned into Hardin Scott, etc.) however, it has nothing to do with the band. It had over 1 billion reads online which is what turned it into a hardcopy book, and now a movie.
What I really didn’t like about the book was Tessa’s whole character. She always thought he was cheating on her when if anything he should be worried about her since she literally cheated on Noah for him. She also never trusted him and was pretty much entitled. Also, this book promoted toxic relationships as romance. Yet, these things made the book better because I loved to make fun of Tessa’s illogical decisions.
The author does a really good job of making Hardin a likable character, despite his rude personality, which is really difficult to do. This book was very addicting and impossible to put down. This book is pretty graphic and resulted in me skipping pages to chapters at times to avoid reading it. For that reason, I’d recommend the book to anyone 15+.
Khadeeja F.