In the After

"This is how I think of time: the past is Before, and the present is the After. Before was reality; the After, a nightmare."

2.75 STARS This book reads very quickly, so quickly that I read it within the span of a few hours. However, I feel that my review has to be somewhat critical of this book for a few reasons. In the After starts out in the Before, which is the time before an apocalyptic occurrence befell Earth and all its inhabitants, with the main character Amy Harris. Amy, at this time 14 years old, is watching television when an extraterrestrial ship appears on all news stations and it seems little green men are running out of it. Within a few days the world is in chaos, all semblance of civilization eaten away by these creatures, later known as the Floraes, and Amy is now forced to take on this horrific world of lethal creatures that hunt at day and stalk at night. Within a few weeks, Amy comes across a small child whom she titles Baby and takes back to her fortified house. Amy now becomes a sister/parent figure to this toddler for the next three years. I won't say that there wasn't some things I liked about this book. I loved the flow of it, how it had me turning page after page and finishing the whole thing and practically one sitting. I enjoyed the first part of the book, which gave a very survivalist, I Am Legend sort of feel and the sign language that Amy and Baby developed together when they were locked in silence for three long years. **SPOILERS** What I didn't like was when the girls were caught and taken to the compound. I didn't like this setting, and I suppose maybe this is a strategy on the writer's part to make us uncomfortable, but I couldn't stop wanted to crawl the walls and escape right along with Amy. Also, the juxtaposition of the future narration of Amy at the Ward for an unknown reason compared to the past tense previous events she is trying to remember. The change in tense really threw me off and unsettled me and gave me some difficulty reading until I pieced together a good feel for this book. I think it might have been better to simply chronologically so that there could be a big lead up, but there still was some of that, so what do I know? Another big issue I had was the diluted and muddy romance in this book. It just wasn't necessary. Rice was very nice (look at me rhyming and all), but to me the 'relationship' felt forced, especially when he practically declared his love for her in the Ward while she was drugged out. I think if there was going to be a romance, they needed more compatibility (they did have some, but I think they needed to be more connected). And, most of all, I just couldn't get past the little green men. Though I did think the plot twist had a nice diversion from other alien invasion books, I thought it was pretty predictable with half a dozen screaming hits dropped before the actual reveal of the secret. The real issue I had was just their appearance and the photosynthesis issue they had within their skin; it was really unsettling to me for some reason and I felt had very shoddy backing for the reasons of how the infected became like this. Anyway, I did enjoy this book, don't get me wrong; it was a page-turner for sure, but I do have some major issues with it that I couldn't get past to give the book four stars. I don't think I'll be reading the second installment in this series, but if I have time, maybe it will happen.