Life After Juliet by Shannon Lee Alexander – eARC Review

Publication Date:

July 5th, 2016

Publisher:

Entangled: Teen

Becca Hanson is a reader-a voracious reader. And with all those fictional friends, she never had time for real ones. Plus real ones come with uncontrollable quirks, like constantly filling a room with song, drawing on any available surface, and worst of all, dying. Real friends are more trouble than they’re worth. Since her best-and only-real friend Charlotte’s death six months before, Becca has returned to a life of books in order to distance herself from heartache and constant loneliness as her junior year at Sandstone High begins.

When a class project forces her into the Drama Club, she attracts the attention of not one, but TWO guys involved in the production, onstage and off. Meanwhile, she’s still dealing with the grief of Charlotte’s death–the fact that Charlie is away at MIT–and that she finally has to build a life for herself on her own terms. Ultimately she learns more about who she is, what she wants, how she feels–and how to find what she’s looking for. (And while she isn’t sure what comes next, she’s pretty sure there’ll be more kissing involved.)

Review:

*I was provided a copy by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Once again this was a buddy read with Cristina @ My Tiny Obsessions so click HERE to read her review and see how much she loved this book (it was a lot) :).

This book!! I don’t know how to explain how good this book was. First of all, I would like to say that this book is a companion to Love and Other Unknown Variables. I didn’t know about this until recently but I think it’s not necessary for you to read it and not having read it didn’t change my love for this book at all. But don’t worry, I already got an e-copy of Love and Other Unknown Variables and I plan to read it soon (even if I know that it will break my heart to a million of tiny little pieces).

I loved all the characters in this book. First of all, Becca is my spirit animal (if we take all the grief over her best-friend’s death and the depression). She was so relatable and I loved her for that. In the beginning Becca is scared of letting people in her life because she’s afraid to lose the people she loves again but she had such an amazing growth throughout the book that made her understand that the important is to have people to love and that love her in her life. It was just amazing. Max was just the cutest thing ever. I loved him and I loved that he never tried to change Becca. He knows how difficult it is to grieve over a loved one and he just let Becca be herself. He did have a great group of friends that accepted Becca right away and that showed her that friendships are important. However, one of my favorite characters had to be Charlie, Becca’s older brother. Charlie was such an amazing big brother and even if he was also grieving he still help Becca a lot and I loved it. Their relationship was just amazing and so was their relationship with their parents. It was so well done and I loved it.

This was my first Shannon Lee Alexander so I didn’t know a lot about her writing but I loved it. I loved the writing, I loved the characters, I loved the plot… look I loved everything about this book. I can’t think about one thing I didn’t like. It was just perfect. I really liked how friendship was an important thing in this book and how it was friendship that helped Becca by the end and not love (even if Max helped a little bit).

Overall, this was an amazing book. It deals with a lot of stuff like grieving, family, friendship and more and it was so well done. I can’t wait to finally read Love and Other Unknown Variables and also everything that Shannon Lee Alexander comes up with next. I definitely recommend this one to everyone :D.