After follows the point of view of two people. The first is Jenna who’s just trying to get by after her father apparently committed suicide. A few chapters in we meet Wesley who is just a couple years older than Jenna and is the former research assistant to her father. These two live in a world where the fear and panic of an outbreak of zombies is a very real thing. Jenna gets a surprise visit from her father’s previous employers–he worked at the company that developed the zombie virus cure–who seem to think she’s still alive. They take her to a facility where she sees Wesley. The two are essentially being held hostage, Jenna to lure her father out of hiding and Wesley to recreate the work on Jenna’s father’s project Genesis. The two form an alliance and help one another escape in an effort to find help from someone Wesley believes to be Jenna’s father. Once they are ‘safe’ they realize that it is not for long and everything is not at all what it seems in Jenna’s life. The world that Jenna and Wesley live in isn’t described a lot in detail. We get the main points which make it so that we know generally what’s going on and don’t get confused. To me, it sounds like the world is sort of a post World War Z world. They developed a ‘cure’ for the zombie virus and for now things are mostly calm. I would’ve loved to have more detail about the previous zombie outbreak and more world-building. What was done in the book was sufficient enough so we knew what was going on but it’s all so intriguing that you start itching for more. Jenna as a character is pretty cool. She’s just trying to get by in the beginning and after everything begins to unfold she gains this drive to discover the truth about what’s happening. Jenna’s also a badass character because of a certain thing that I won’t talk about, but it definitely makes her badass. Wesley is a strange character. I didn’t much like him in the beginning because he was whiny and resented to entire world. However, as the story progresses and we get a little of his history, it’s very obvious why is he the way that he is. When he realizes he has feelings for Jenna, his personality gets more attractive. She sort of changes him, giving him something to care about so that’s pretty adorable when you’re reading it. The action and horror in After is very well done. It’s fast paced and keeps you on the edge of your seat. Samantha obviously took a lot of time constructing the action sequences in her head before putting it all down on paper. And oh the horror! I haven’t read very many horror novels–at least not as many as I’d like to–but this one was great. There’s parts that are scary but it’s not too overwhelmingly creepy. The description of the zombies was great, I could get a picture in my mind of how they looked stalking after someone. All of that being said, my issue with After was that I wanted more. It’s a very quick, short read. It’s just under 200 pages in length and because of the action and plot, it reads fast. Because of this, I feel it would’ve been great to add in more. Not an extension of the plot after the ending, but more detail. After could’ve used more world building with regards to the first zombie outbreak. It also would’ve been really interesting to read more about the ‘cure’ and all the experiments that Jenna’s father worked on. Overall, I enjoyed After a lot. It was a great zombie novel with project Genesis showing a new take on the subject. I’m hooked for what happens next for Jenna and Wesley–especially after that ending!–and would definitely recommend it to all you zombie-loving people out there. sleepsontables/2014/12/01/review-after-by-samantha-gregory/#comment-314
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 10:05:39 +0000
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