After 101

Review 4- SugarScape reviewer 1

link: http://www.sugarscape.com/bookclub/reviews/a1072004/book-review-after-anna-todds-one-direction-fan-fic-turned-novel/

There's no point trying to deny it. I love a good romance. Peeta and Katniss, Harry and Ginny - I'm all over them like hot buttered toast. That said, the thought of a cringey, cheesy sort of love story with a car crash ending usually makes want to be sick in my own mouth, and as a result, New Adult and fan fic aren't usually my thing.

So when it came to After, I was kind of suspicious. I'd never read it on Wattpad, but naturally the excuse to read about a character based on a member of One Direction was enough to get me interested, plus that many fans of the series couldn't be wrong, could they?

Correct - a couple of chapters in and I was hooked to the extent that as soon as I finished the book, I was straight online to find out what happens next on the fic.

What I liked most about it was the characters. When things kick off, Tessa is frankly kind of annoying with her goodie two-shoes ways and totally not my type of heroine. But as things progress and you begin to understand why she is the way she is, you can't help but root for her and that's before we even get to Hardin (aka Harry), who might seem like the typical troubled bad boy, but turns out to be pleasantly intelligent and a complex character with a ridiculously juicy back story.

This is obviously never going to be literary fiction, but if you like a good story, it's the ultimate guilty pleasure read that will have you staying up all night desperate to find out what happens next. The writing itself is so compelling that it's a total page turner and I read the whole thing from start to finish in a day, refusing to speak to anyone in that time because I was too busy obsessing over whether Hessa would make it through the book in one piece. It's probably actually because it's based on a fic that the story never lulls - there's drama from start to finish, not to mention the kind of steamy sex scenes that mean it's not probably one to be lending to your gran.

Ultimately, it's totally won me over. Screw Jacob and Edward - I'm officially Team Hardin. Speaking of which, the only thing I was a bit confused about is why the fluff everyone's getting so het up about it being based on Harry. As far as I could tell, the character in the book bore literally no more resemblance to the 1D singer than the postman who drops off our mail in the morning. Both guys are English and both have curly hair - that's it. Yes we all know Anna started writing the character as Harry, but from what we've seen so far, the Hardin in After is a character all of her own.