I enjoyed reading this book, especially from the perspective of the book’s narrator. Lucy is a brave young girl who’s own experiences shape how she perceives others. She is thoughtful and kind. This book provides an interesting perspective on school shootings, and the emotional journey necessary to move forward.

An important story of hope after immense grief and shocking tragedy.

This book had so many strengths, dealing with such a shocking subject as a school shooting, and childhood trauma and bereavement in an age-appropriate and relatable way. Subjects often relegated to 'grown-up news' stories, when, especially in the case of school shootings, it is the children who feel the impact, the loss, and may have the least support, communication skills, or experience to even begin to come to terms with such a thing.

The writing was excellent, the main character extremely relatable, and I loved the Maths jokes, and the way she figured out her world as equations and formulae, working her way through human relationships and complex emotions through mathematics, that was great as you don't often read about female characters with an aptitude and straight-up love for maths and logic, though we do exist!

The reason I gave this 3 stars, and not a higher rating, is simply because, understandably, there isn't much joy in the book. Yes, there's hope at the end, and yes, it feels true to life, and it is important that nothing romanticizes or trivializes gun crime, mass murder, or childhood illness and mortality, but it was difficult to read/listen to, the tone is sombre, thoughtful, respectful, but overall it is so sad. So, while I rated it high for writing, character development, and sympathy, I could not, from my experience of it, give it a high score for enjoyment or plot, and would not know who to recommend it to.

It is a strange one to rate really, and I may well have to reconsider my rating, or rating system for books like these. I think it is a valuable story to have in the world for many reasons, and I hope it will help young trauma sufferers to see themselves represented in such a way, and would be an excellent teaching book, but not sure how many Middle Grade readers in general, would pick this up by choice over other books.

A note on format: I listened to the audiobook, read by the author: Emily Barth Isler, and I thought her reading was fantastic, she clearly loved and knew her characters and their emotions very well.

Thank you to Lerner Digital for the ALC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a Middle Grade that covers some hard hitting topics. I feel that this book cover these issues very well, and it is so well written. I loved getting to know the characters in this book. I do feel that this is a middle grade book that parents and kids should read together, so they can talk more over the topics cover in this book. I have a son that has a congenital heart defect lucky his is not life treating. My daughter at first was super worried about the fact we may lost him. I think at times Adults forget that kids worry to, and we do not know what to do to help them. I think this book also can help adults see that fact. There are a lot of great messages in this book. I listen to the audiobook of this book, and I have to say the narrator was really good. I was kindly provided an e-audiobook of this book by the publisher (Carolrhoda Books) or author (Emily Barth Isler) via NetGalley, so I can give an honest review about how I feel about this book. I want to send a big Thank you to them for that.

I loved this audiobook, it is great for teens and adults. The story talks about grief, mental health, friends and family. This difficult subject was handled incredibly by this author.

Aftermath is a great middle grades novel by Emily Barth Isler. The story follows 7th grade Lucy in her transition to a new school. Her family moved to start over after her younger brother's death from a heart condition. Lucy is no stranger to grief, and neither are any of her classmates at her new school. Four years ago, there was a tragic school shooting at the school that killed 27 people, including students and staff. Lucy struggles with balancing her own grief while learning about her classmates' traumas.

I don't read that many middle grade novels, and I was surprised at how openly Aftermath confronted such serious topics. Still, everything was definitely handled in an age-appropriate manner. I even think this could be a great book for adults to read with the middle schoolers in their lives to open up lines of communication since that is a conflict in the story with Lucy and her parents.

AfterMath is the third book I have read this year that has dealt with a school shooting before or after the fact. AfterMath is a middle grades novel by Emily Barth Isler and the title has multiple meanings. The idea for AfterMath came to Isler after the December 2, 2015 shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernadino, California. She had a baby and a 4-year-old at the time.

Each chapter of AfterMath begins with a Math problem. Our main character is Lucy who is twelve years old and dealing with the death of her younger brother from a rare congenital heart defect. Dealing with the loss, Lucy’s parents decide to move. They move to where her parents have a shorter commute, but they also move to a town that has not had new members to the community since there was a school shooting four years earlier. Not only that, but Lucy is also the age of the students who were victims of the shooting. The house they move into was also the home of a girl her age who died in the shooting.

Lucy’s adjustment to a new school in a unique situation at an awkward time of life is our story. There are so many important issues addressed in this book with loss and grief being at the forefront. PTSD in various forms is also addressed along with bullying. For one particular student we see the effects of how the sins of one person affect another who had nothing to do with said sin. We see how everyone experiences their grief in different ways, and the way Lucy does this is not telling anyone at her new school about the recent loss of her brother.

I really liked Lucy and how we see her love of Math despite having problems with learning the concept of Infinity. We see how she grows over the course of the novel. We also get to know Avery through Lucy, a girl whom everyone at the school avoids. We also see Lucy’s homelife with her parents and mysterious math jokes appearing in her room. Lucy has a good relationship with her math teacher who also teaches her after-school mime class.

This is a great book for those in the middle grades age group. I listened to the audiobook version which the author also narrated. She brought a special voice to the novel. I received an arc copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

AfterMath is definitely recommended for the middle grades ages readers.

I got to hear the audiobook AfterMath which created a lot of emotion thinking of the struggle of people in the story. The way the survivors of the shooting speaks about it is like a weather forecast and Lucy, who lost her brother Theo and shifted to a new place where she faces more difficulties and she joined the class which was more affected by the shooting and having a lot of memories.

There are a lot of sad moments that make you feel a lot. I really felt bad for Lucy's family who was acting like they are good and happy, finally, they had the guts to speak about they miss Theo and accept the loss and speak it.

I really felt pity for Ivory as no one speaks to her as the shooter was her brother but Lucy made her friend and created a good impact on her.

We all have problems and sorrow that cannot be compared as each pain is different. We should try to speak up with the close ones or seek medical help than getting depressed thinking of the past and living in it.

Mental health is equally important to physical health. Just speak out. In all countries, mental health was a taboo topic. Start speaking and share your problems that will reduce your pain a little by little and helps to move on in life.

This is such a good story, and so important too! It made it all that more touching that the author narrated her own story.

It’s so good. It hits you right in the feels from the very beginning and just never lets up.
Lucy's parents decide to move after her little brother dies of a heart defect. They think of it as a new start, but they also decide that the best place to do that is the Washington suburb where a gunman entered an elementary school and killed a lot of people fours years earlier. And Lucy starts the new school year as not only the first new student since the incident but in the same grade as the survivors. I'm not going to talk more about the plot because I truly appreciate the little twists, turns, and revelations that Barth Isler worked into it. It shows the different levels and reactions to events in a very humanistic way.
There are very dark topics touched in a way that I think is perfectly appropriate for the target age. I also particularly enjoyed the way the author manages to weave healing and hope into the story in such a way that shows that it's not just about getting 'over' trauma but learning to live with and accept it.
It hits hard to read this fictionalized school where kids talk about dead friends and go into serious PTSD episodes when the fire alarm accidentally goes off because I can easily picture it happening for real. It's a sad truth of today's world where bulletproof backpacks are sold. But I appreciate how it can give a voice and a story to prove that you can move on from the worst moments in your life.
I would particularly like to give kudos to the author for the brilliant wordplay involved in the title and Lucy's love of Math. Just that element would be worthy of praise.

The audiobook narration was very good, and it makes sense because it's read by the author. She knows when to hit what key in order to elicit the right emotion for the scene. It shows that the person doing the narration cares about the story.

Many happy thanks to NetGalley and Lerner Audiobooks for the emotional early listen!

Really fun audio book, though the theme was less my thing i did still really enjoy it. I had a fun time listening and sorting out the math and it's link within the story

This is a story that at some times was quite hard. It’s always going to be difficult subject matter. A death of a child. This took the different route of it being told through the eyes of the sister. It gave insight into her feelings and her thoughts which I suspect sometimes gets lost. It was sensitively done and I could imagine being a useful tool for children to use who have been or are going through a similar situation. The narrator of this audio book was the author which was great and I it was easy to listen to her telling of the story.
Thank you @netgalley for this arc

Emily Barth Isler's book "Aftermath" is sensitive title about a young girl's loss, a family's loss, and a town's loss. Lucy and her family move to a new town, needing a new setting to restart their lives after the loss of their son/brother. However, Lucy quickly discovers that the town has suffered it's own tragedy which occurred the year before at the new school she would be attending - mass shooting at the school. Isler's sensitive approach to both the topic of family loss, but the trauma-informed perspective of the students is well crafted. As a reader, it was deeply inciteful, the usage of performing arts as a therapeutic way to have students share their feelings. I found that Lucy's own emotions were relatable, especially as she found herself in the middle of this sea of emotions while trying to still understand her own personal loss as she worked on understanding the emotions of her classmates who had lost friends and family members. Isler's research and sensitivity is seen throughout this book as she created her characters and is shown through Lucy's experiences. Definite read with understanding of the book's contents.

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* really loved this book, coming from a generation where school shootings have been common my whole life its sad we have gotten to the point we have to write books about enitre classrooms of children being killed and it be based in truth but important we don't gloss over it, its something that needs to be talked about and that as far as America goes, most kids will grow up dealing with.

This book touches on lots of subjects, mainly gun violence and grief, but many other bumps in the road kids (and adults) face. 5 out of 5, plan on buying several copies!

This was good, but maybe just not my thing? My biggest pet peeve in novels is statistics being used, I just find it incredibly boring, especially when I have to listen to it over and over via the audiobook.

Though not completely for me, I can definitely see the merit of this book. It deals with grief very well and the characters are decent, it just feels a bit incomplete.

As an a parent and an educator, I enjoyed Aftermath. I feel that it would appeal to both YA readers and a wider audience.

It is well written, nicely structured and deals sensitively with some tricky topics.

Recommended.

AfterMath tells the story of Lucy who moves to a new town after her brother dies of a congenital heart defect. It’s not easy being the new kid especially in a school where a school shooting took place four years prior. Lucy struggles to make friends and focuses on her love of math which leads her to join an after-school mime class taught by her math teacher. Through this club Lucy begins to make friends and find her place in her new school.

I loved how the author, Emily Barth Isler, brought math into this story. As a math geek myself, it was nice to see a main character like Lucy with such love for the subject. Each chapter starts with an equation that fits with that chapter. There are also math jokes throughout the book that I enjoyed. The title AfterMath is so clever because it has different meanings in this story - the aftermath of Lucy losing her brother and how her parents react to it, the aftermath of the school shooting and how the kids are coping, and the mime class with is actually after math class.

This is a middle grade book, and it’s definitely more focused on the older spectrum for this genre. Younger children may not be able to fully understand some of the tougher topics like mental illness, loss of a sibling, parents dealing with tragedy, and a school shooting. I think the author did a great job of handling these topics with a lot of sensitivity while keeping them realistic.

I listened to the audiobook which the author narrates. At first I wasn’t sure how it would be, but I was really impressed with her performance. She put a lot of heart into voicing Lucy.

Thank you NetGalley and Lerner Audiobooks for an advanced listeners copy in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an electronic copy to listen to and review.

I was so impressed with this book! Lucy has just moved to a new home and school after the death of her younger brother. The town she moves to was the site of a mass school shooting 4 years prior and Lucy's classmates were directly impacted by the shooting. The book looks at grief, family, and friendships. It is so beautiful and compassionate.

It is a story about grief, loss and the aftermath. I absolutely loved the audiobook and it was narrated so well. I liked reading Lucy's perspective and her take on things. The book deals with grief in an exceptional way and it has one of the most realistic portrayal of loss. Every character had a distinguishable personality. I really like that that Lucy was a maths geek and how maths is intertwined in the story.. The book is so well written that i could not stop reading.it. It is raw and full of emotion. It shows how everyone has their own way of dealing with grief and the book emphasizes on the importance of mental health as well.

it gave me a whole new perspective and opened my eyes to some things that i had not considered before. Also, i realized that how difficult it can be for someone coming from a different school and how the children can feel like they do not know or understand their grief. The way how the loss of Theo impacted the whole family and the relationship between Lucy and her parents was so realistic. It shows that sometimes even the ones you think know best may not know how to deal with every situation.

I can honestly go on and on about why i love this book so much. I highly recommend everyone, even adults, to check out this book. Although, for middle grade readers, I think it does require a little maturity.

After the death of her brother, 12-year-old Lucy and her family move to another town where, years earlier, the kids now in her grade experienced a tragic school shooting. I can't give enough praise for this book! It deals with the traumatic effects of grief and loss in such a realistic, yet sensitive manner. This is a book that I would recommend as required reading. If you haven't experienced loss, this book stresses compassion, understanding and kindness. If you've experienced loss or trauma, it's a help to process, remember, and honor what was lost. The book brought me to tears. I, like Lucy, lost a sibling almost 30 years ago. As Lucy says, "Grief is infinite. You may think you're over it, but there's always another step to take before you actually get to the wall, ad that means you're never really there."
#AfterMath #NetGalley

REVIEW: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Trigger Warnings: Terminal Child Illness, Elementary School Shooting, PTSD

This is a novel about a girl named Lucy who has recently lost her brother, Theo (5 yrs old) to a heart condition. Because her parents think they need a new start, they moved to a new town where Lucy has to start over in a new school. The school contains the class that has lived through a school shooting at their old elementary school. Lucy wrestles with fitting in, finding friends, listening to people talk about the shootings, and all the while dealing with parents who are not coping well with the Theo's death and therefore not giving her the support she needs. I won't spoil the story, but loved it so much. I used to teach middle school, and truly feel this should be a part of every school district's curriculum! It touches on so many poignant topics including: Dealing with loss, friendship, inclusion, kindness, forgiveness, perspective, and bravery. Although this is a phenomenal read for children, I feel adults gain just as much from this book. This was a beautiful story!! I cannot emphasize enough how much this book moved me.