The After Girls by Leah Konen

So this ended exactly as I predicted early on, but that didn't lessen my enjoyment. I did think the ending did not explain things thoroughly, but it was easy to fill in the gaps. I felt the writing was beautiful and sad. The grief felt by Sydney and Ella was real and heart-wrenching. It really highlighted the pain felt by those left behind in the wake of a suicide.

I liked the dueling chapters with each girl's POV. This typically works best in first person, but in this case third person worked great. Each girl was unique and fleshed out. Both girls are consumed by grief, but each deal with it in their own way. Sydney resorts to self-medicating by drinking. There was a fair amount of drinking from all of the characters which is probably realistic, but by showing it as the norm made it a problem for me.

The relationships felt sincere, and even though there are two love triangles, they felt realistic and not contrived. I absolutely loathed Max. I could see why Sydney was drawn to him since she seemed self-destructive, but every scene he was in made my skin crawl. I do not understand the fascination with bad boys. It is so prevalent in YA lit these days that the girl falls for the bad boy. Give me a nice guy any day of the week.

This was a satisfying read, and I definitely want to see more works by this author.

Besides the portrayal of underage drinking, there was some foul language. It also eludes to one of the characters hooking up.