The After Girls

March 1, 2013
After their best friend takes her own life, recently graduated high school seniors Ella and Sydney are left behind to pick up the pieces and cope with the gnawing guilt that there was something they might have done to prevent Astrid from doing the unthinkable. While Sydney opts to quell the voice inside with booze and music, Ella is plagued by nightmares and visions she can't escape. When she confesses that Astrid has been sending her text messages and phone calls from the grave, Ella's friends begin to question her sanity. The circumstances surrounding Astrid's death grow even more mysterious when her cousin Jake comes to town, and it becomes clear that Ella and Sydney didn't know their friend quite as well as they thought. Teen suicide is hardly new subject matter for young-adult fiction, and this debut fails to really distinguish itself from the rest of the pack. Though the layers of mystery surrounding Ella's visions of Astrid add intrigue, the relationships among the girls are disappointingly underdeveloped. Konen gives lip service to the depth of the threesome's friendship, but their connection and underlying love for one another never passes the believability test. Astrid remains an enigma throughout the story, while Sydney and Ella feel more like friends of convenience as opposed to high school besties trying to cope with a tragic loss. Skip. (Fiction. 14-17)

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June 1, 2013

Gr 9 Up-After high school graduation, Ella and Sydney are looking forward to their last summer with their friend Astrid. Then Astrid commits suicide, and their world is shattered. The teens each find different ways to cope and slowly begin to drift apart. Sydney resorts to drinking away her sorrows, while Ella suffers from sleepless nights afflicted with nightmares about Astrid's death. When she begins to receive messages and phone calls from their dead friend, Sydney thinks she's crazy, but Ella grows determined to solve the mysteries surrounding their friend and the reasons behind her death. The characters' background information is sporadically revealed and poorly integrated, and the plot is excessively drawn out. The choppy writing and underdeveloped relationships make the story difficult to get through. The ending has some redeeming qualities, but teens are unlikely to keep reading past the first few chapters. The plot is reminiscent of varying aspects of Sara Shepard's Pretty Little Liars (HarperCollins, 2006) and Laurie Halse Anderson's Wintergirls (Viking, 2009), but does not live up to either.-Candyce Pruitt-Goddard, Hartford Public Library, CT

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