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I really did want to love this book. I had so many expectations jumping into it but unfortunately, was disappointed. The After series was so good in my opinion, but I think Anna should have just left it alone after book 4. Sometimes it's best not to drag a story.
First of all, you cannot read this book as a stand alone because you wouldn't understand anything. Before gives you a little more insight on the other characters in the After series, and had Anna developed that alone, further, it probably would have been a better read. But for the most part it's the retelling of After, from Hardin's POV. Unfortunately though, a lot of important details are omitted from the story which make you ask yourself over and over .... what? I also felt the writing was a bit all over the place making it difficult to keep me interested in the book.
I really dislike giving poor ratings and like I said, I truly enjoyed the After series, but when reviewing I find it only fair to be honest, and in this case I would have been okay with not reading this book.
First of all, you cannot read this book as a stand alone because you wouldn't understand anything. Before gives you a little more insight on the other characters in the After series, and had Anna developed that alone, further, it probably would have been a better read. But for the most part it's the retelling of After, from Hardin's POV. Unfortunately though, a lot of important details are omitted from the story which make you ask yourself over and over .... what? I also felt the writing was a bit all over the place making it difficult to keep me interested in the book.
I really dislike giving poor ratings and like I said, I truly enjoyed the After series, but when reviewing I find it only fair to be honest, and in this case I would have been okay with not reading this book.
Not sure of the continuity between this and the other books in the series, but I liked reading stuff from Hardin's POV. The other character POVs were interesting too but the book sure jumped around a lot between them and points in the timeline.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Not as good as the previous books as it felt very rushed through.
emotional
hopeful
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
This book is hard to rate as it’s more of “catch all” to fill every gap for every character’s storyline in the series. My obsessive, curious brain liked it, but also, some things are better left to the imagination.
It was fun to switch back and forth between this and After, with Harden’s POV, but I also noticed a mistake on which character was asking a question.
Overall, if you’re invested in the story and back story of every character that isn’t Tessa, it’s worth the read…but also maybe not.
It was fun to switch back and forth between this and After, with Harden’s POV, but I also noticed a mistake on which character was asking a question.
Overall, if you’re invested in the story and back story of every character that isn’t Tessa, it’s worth the read…but also maybe not.
adventurous
fast-paced
Reading his perspective of everything kind of put everything like those last minute like touches on the overall plot and story and I love that. Well. I don't like the only reason why I didn't give it a 5 out of five. Is that the little snippets of all the other characters kind of threw me off because of my head? I'm trying to think like oh did he go interview these people for his book? Because in my head I'm reading this book as if this is his book that he published. So like yeah it's giving us more information about the characters as readers. Just looking into the story but the same time from the way that he wrote or the way that this book is written. I'm looking it as his book like his book. After that he published. So it's kind of hard for me to like read the character information or characters and then be like. Yeah it's just more information even though I know it's just literally more information.