After by Anna Todd…ARC Review and Giveaway

Synopsis:

Tessa is a good girl with a sweet, reliable boyfriend back home. She’s got direction, ambition, and a mother who’s intent on keeping her that way. But she’s barely moved into her freshman dorm when she runs into Hardin. With his tousled brown hair, cocky British accent, tattoos, and lip ring, Hardin is cute and different from what she’s used to.

But he’s also rude – to the point of cruelty, even. For all his attitude, Tessa should hate Hardin and she does — until she finds herself alone with him in his room. Something about his dark mood grabs her, and when they kiss it ignites within her a passion she’s never known before.

He’ll call her beautiful, then insist he isn’t the one for her and disappear again and again. Despite the reckless way he treats her, Tessa is compelled to dig deeper and find the real Hardin beneath all his lies. He pushes her away again and again, yet every time she pushes back, he only pulls her in deeper.

Tessa already has the perfect boyfriend. So why is she trying so hard to overcome her own hurt pride and Hardin’s prejudice about nice girls like her?

Unless… could this be love?

My review:

After is the Wattpad fan-fic phenom turned published work of author Anna Todd and I was really anxious to get my hands on a copy and see what all the hoopla was about. I just finished it last night and I have to say, overall I really enjoyed it.

Looking forward to starting her freshman year of college, Tessa is pretty sure she has all her ducks in a row. She’s a good student, organized, not a partier, has a supportive boyfriend, and a responsible nature. A good girl, for all intents and purposes. All that goes out the window, however, when she heads to her first frat party and meets Hardin. He’s nothing she should ever be attracted to. He’s pompous and rude…he’s also pretty damn good looking. He’s the quintessential bad boy and someone she should stay far away from. Unfortunately, with as many times as they keep running into each other, that’s nearly impossible. Now, Hardin is sending her a whole lot of mixed messages and she starts to second-guess her original impression of him. Could there be more to this tattooed bad boy than just a brash exterior? Does she really want to find out?

I’ve read a whole lot of different reviews on After and they range from hating it to devouring it and I probably fall in the happy medium range. Overall, After was an enjoyable read. That being said, I really like the Travis Maddox book guys of the world, so I didn’t mind this type of angst filled read. Tessa is the smart and sweet good girl with great intentions and a shiny outlook on the world and what college life should be like. She’s also pretty sheltered and a bit on the naïve side in the beginning. After meeting Hardin, she starts to sing a different tune and realizes not everyone is as polite and mannerly as she is. Hardin is opposite of her in so many ways, the biggest being his bad boy persona. Hardin is a bit of an ass for the most part but when we start to read deeper into his personality, he is indeed more complex than we originally think. A sad childhood and inability to love helping form his poor attitude and giving Tessa all the more reason to want to fix him and heal his wounds. She tries to ignore all the feelings he is bringing within her and knows she deserves better than a brooding hottie with prickly demeanor….we all can guess how that goes though! Few people can resist the bad boy and Tessa is not immune. There was a whole lot of push and pull between these two, at times a bit too much in my opinion, but in the end it did add up to create the relationship between them.

Now, I will warn you that even after the length of this book, there is a cliffhanger ending and, as much as I don’t mind them, I know a lot of you do. So, you’ve been warned!

To sum it all up, After is a story of young lovers and the discovery of all the angst and emotion that comes along with two opposites falling for each other.

Three-and-a-Half Loves

Giveaway:

Comment on this post to be entered to win one of two paperback copies of AFTER  (U.S. entires only, please)

Buy the book:

Simon & Schuster 

About the author:

Anna Todd is a first-time writer spending her days in the Austin, Texas, area with her husband, with whom she beat half the statistics by getting married one month after graduating high school. Between her husband’s three deployments to Iraq, she worked odd jobs from a makeup counter to the IRS processing center. Anna was always an avid reader and boy band and romance lover, so now that she’s found a way to combine the three she’s enjoying living a real-life dream come true.

Find her at AnnaToddBooks.com, on Twitter at @Imaginator1Dx, on Instagram at @Imaginator1D, and on Wattpad as Imaginator1D. – See more at: http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Anna-Todd/474410587#sthash.ThoQK9UK.dpuf