Thursday, July 21, 2011

Hereafter by Tara Hudson

Hereafter by Tara Hudson
Publisher:  HarperTeen
Publish Date:  June 7, 2011
ISBN:  978-0062026774   
Pages:  416
Jacket Art:  Rachael Kornfeld
Jacket Design:  Erin Fitzsimmons




I'll be completely honest - I was drawn to this book by the gorgeous cover and the blurb.  I love paranormal stories and if you throw in a love story, well, that's ok with me.  I'm not huge on love stories, but I can get behind it.  I want to love this book, but I just can't.  I love the premise of the story: girl saves boy, they fall in love, overcome obstacles, there's evil afoot, etc.  However, so much didn't make sense to me.  But you know what, it doesn't have to, it's not my story!

What I liked:
    It's well written and flows nicely.  The first chapter grabbed me and it was amazing, Amelia's terror was obvious and I wanted to see where we went from there.  The relationship between Joshua and Amelia almost makes you forget that she's a ghost and he's a 'real boy'.  Eli is an interesting character.  I love that Amelia's been 'lost' for so long and has no idea of what's going on.

What I didn't like:
     The romance stands out more than the mystery.  I felt like the mystery of Amelia's death and what Eli was doing was second to the romance and wasn't as important.  I got bored with it, honestly.  Joshua is entirely too accepting of a ghost girl.  He's like "oh, you're a ghost, ok, you're beautiful, let's make out.'  Eil misses obvious chances to really stir things up and gives Amelia too much explanation showing his evilness, he had chances to woo her over to his side before she got too involved with Joshua.


I see that this will be a series of books, so perhaps these things will be worked out in the next book.  I liked it enough to read the second one just to see where it goes. 

1 comment:

  1. I'm halfway through it and i was in love since the first page. It was so hard to put it down. Hudson writes beautifully and descriptively, and she really just pulls you in to this Hereafter world. I fell in love with the main dead girl, Amelia. She's dead, can't remember the past too much, and its a story of her fighting from submitting into evil and darkness and fighting to remember herself and who she was before she died and struggling to stay with the guy she loves, the only person who really woke her up from her fog of death.

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