Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Mystery, Thriller, Realistic Fiction, Suspense, Horror
Rate: 4 STARS!
Synopsis: Would you risk your life to save your best friend?
Synopsis: Would you risk your life to save your best friend?
Julia did. When a paroled predator attacked Liv in the woods, Julia fought back and got caught. Liv ran, leaving Julia in the woods for a terrifying 48 hours that she remembers only in flashbacks. One year later, Liv seems bent on self-destruction, starving herself, doing drugs, and hooking up with a violent new boyfriend. A dead girl turns up in those same woods, and Julia’s memories resurface alongside clues unearthed by an ambitious reporter that link the girl to Julia’s abductor. As the devastating truth becomes clear, Julia realizes that after the woods was just the beginning.
READ ON FOR A REVIEW, GUEST POST AND GIVEAWAY!
“You think I’m a
mess?”
“Together, you’re a
mess. Alone, I think you’re fascinating. And a little bit of a mess. But mostly
fascinating.” Kellan says.
Which is pretty much what I loved about After the Woods.
That it was part messy, part fascinating, part chemistry, part understanding
and entirely an adrenaline filled piece of magic!
Would you give yourself up to save your best friend? Would
you throw yourself in from of an assailant – potentially ending your own life –
just to let someone else get free? I mean, we all think we could, but would you
really?
Well, Julia Spunk did. And after she got away, she became a
hero. Of course, if she had been killed, she would have become that and a
martyr, but still. Julia Spunk ran into the woods with her best friend, met a
psycho gunning for her friend, sacrificed herself and 48 hours later, returned.
And now, almost a year after what has been dubbed The
Shiverton Abduction, a body has been found in the woods. In an entire year,
everybody has only told her versions of the truth; told her that forgetting was
infinitely better than healing – but that’s not the way Julia processes. She
needs to find things out for herself, to see and to question. And nobody gets
that.
Because even though it all happened a year ago, as the blurb
quotes, the Woods were just the beginning of her story.
For the most part, I loved After the Woods. It had just the
right amount of craziness and adrenaline, mixed with complicated relationships,
undeniable chemistry and broken people that I needed it to have. It was pretty
much perfect, except for that ending. I mean, WHAT? WHAT WAS THAT?
There has to be more, right? Is there more?
I just finished this book today, and I pretty much have
nothing to say except that this book is DEFINITELY worth reading – so go, pick
up a copy! 4 stars!
Oh, also, just a quote that I loved:
“There’s something
grounding about having a gym teacher straight from central casting screaming
about dodgeball, the purest form of Darwinian selection in any high school.”
**GUEST POST**
When It Comes to Brave Girls in YA, One Size Doesn’t Fit
All
by Kim Savage
When I started
writing After the Woods four years ago, the big mainstream news story was about
the arrival of fictional female heroines who could kick butt. Google “kickass
YA heroine” circa 2012 and here’s a sampling of what you’ll get:
CNN.com 3/2012: Katniss Everdeen and Other Action
Heroines!
WIRED 3/2012: Hunger Games Star Shoots To Top of Action
Heroine Hot List
NY Times 4/2012: A
Radical Female Hero From Dystopia
Any YA reader
could tell you that Katniss’s physicality was matched by her wit and strength
of character. But that wasn’t the angle getting play.
And here I was,
back in 2012, writing a main character who was fit but not overly strong; no
warrior trained in martial arts or carrying a crossbow. Who was going to battle
a predator and then a whopping case of PTSD one year later. Julia’s survival
would require a mental toughness that took quirky forms: obsessive note-taking,
counting stars, and reciting math problems in her head, to name a few. She
would make questionable alliances. Visit the mother of her perpetrator. Betray
the hot boy. Ask exquisitely painful questions to reach the truth.
If Julia’s brand
of courage is hard to understand, her best friend Liv’s is harder. Liv is the
friend who left Julia in the woods. Where’s the bravery in that, you wonder?
But Liv is hurting badly, and when the plot is set in motion, she’s at her
tipping point. She’s done everything in her power to achieve freedom and has
failed. She’s about to be caged, figuratively, literally, and permanently. When
Liv sees a solution, she goes for it, even though it is unthinkable. Worse, she
conscripts everyone around her to her get there.
Terror doesn't come in gradations. All
terror is the same, whether it’s
wrought by Purple Man, or Isis, or a predator in the woods, or someone who is
supposed to love you unconditionally. It’s the way we respond to it is that
varies. Julia and Liv are both fighting oppression, and they both prevail,
bravely. There’s something healthy for the reader in stretching the limits of
what they consider brave, and so worth rooting for. The new kind of brave girl
hoves us out of our comfort zones and makes us identify with whatever
courage she shows, in all its forms. She might be obnoxious, or cruel, or
disguise her pain in socially unacceptable ways, but if being brave requires
those things; well.
The best stories ask hard questions of
readers, and leave our responses unformed for a while, until we’ve had a chance
to ruminate on them. Would I sacrifice someone I love for the greater good?
Would I let someone hurt themselves if it meant their torment would end? In the
case of After the Woods, I wanted readers to ask themselves if they could be
brave in the ways that Julia and Liv are, if it meant being free.
Maybe the time is right to reconsider
what defines brave. YA consumers are sophisticated readers who understand
nuance. They've been rooting for nontraditionally brave heroines for years
(think of Lyra Bevacqua, whose deceptions keep her alive). I’m optimistic
mainstream media will figure this out, particularly with the arrival of Jessica
Jones on Netflix, a brave heroine with well-drawn fatal flaws.
There will be no Julia or Liv action
hero dolls. The take-aways from my book are the questions that readers will be
asked to consider. Most especially, what does it mean to be brave?
Follow the After The Woods by Kim Savage Blog Tour and don't miss anything! Click on the banner to see the tour schedule.
Kim Savage is the author of AFTER THE WOODS, a debut psychological thriller for young adults coming on Feb 23, 2016 with Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Macmillan. Her second thriller for young adults comes from FSG is 2017. Before writing fiction, she worked as business journalist, pitching stories along the lines of “Stigmatized Properties: When Murder Kills Property Values”. You get the idea.
No comments:
Post a Comment