An honest start to this review would be to say that the cover drew me in far more than the description. It looks interesting. What was this girl doing on a cliff? What fall is the title referring to? It looks so peaceful. So starting to read i automatically realized that author Kate Hart had a great writing style. The story flowed nicely and had a lot of realistic nuances, behaviors, and personalities that you would see in typical teenagers. After the Fall follows Raychel as she navigates a love triangle, frienships, and tragedy.

While I enjoyed the style writing and the flow of the story, I found the main point of the story that was teased in the synopsis and in the title of the book took a long time to get to. I felt a majority of the book was "before the fall" rather than "after the fall" in the sense this book was referring. It was also a lot of repetitive actions by the teenagers. Typical teenage behavior consisting of hiding things from friends, secret crushes, parties, hating homework, etc. A good 60 percent of the book was the same stuff, although there was a building relationship intertwined in. However the final 40 percent seemed more rushed than it needed to be simply because the rest of the book was the lead up. I would have enjoyed reading more of the struggle following the turning point in the book and seeing how each individual character handled it. However, the time line was more rushed and I felt almost cheated out of those emotions.

Even with the rushed timeline, I felt the characters were an interesting array that matches many different personality types. I love this type of book because everyone reading it can relate to someone. That is one of the most important things for an author to do is give characters that people can enjoy reading about and compare their own life experiences to. While I may not have loved every aspect of this book, I respect Hart's work and writing and will definitely be looking forward to more of her work. Three out five stars for After the Fall.

Lovely and haunting. Hart's prose is dream-like and heartbreaking.

This will go live on my blog on Jan. 23. Kellyvision.wordpress.com

Raychel and Matt have been best friends forever. The two of them are inseparable and Matt has always expected that he and Raychel would end up together. Except something happens at a party (between Raychel and another guy) and then Raychel and Matt's brother hook up. Matt isn't told and, of course, finds out in a pretty awful way.

There's a lot going on in this book and yet it never feels like an issues book. Yes, issues of consent are brought up; yes, the idea of loyalty (what do you owe people?) is a factor. But there's a lot more to it than that.

Raychel and Matt are fundamentally good people who do horrible things. (Like most of us.) This is a book about that and about forgiveness and about moving on as best you can.

Highly recommended.