Review: Before & After by Nazarea Andrews

Title: Before & After
By: Nazarea Andrews
My Copy: Ebook from Publisher
The BookWhisperer's Rating: 

Rike and Peyton fell in love in college.

A boy from the wrong side of the tracks, covered in ink and crooning in a bar is the last person a straight laced girl with a art major should fall for, but his rough edges made her jagged, alive, shaving away the coddled southern princess and revealing a soul wild and brilliant.

They fell in love, despite her family and his past and all the reasons why it wouldn't work--and with their best friends, they made a life. Everyone was supposed to live happily ever after.

They, more than anyone, knows that life doesn't go according to plan.

Rike and Peyton fell in love in college. A boy with a guitar, and a poet's heart, and a girl with freckles dusted over her nose, a perfect fucking fairy tale.

But what happens when the fairy tale doesn't fall apart--but is forgotten?

I have tried to devour every Nazarea Andrews book that I can get my hands on (a mission that I am close to accomplishing) and there is one reason why: BECAUSE SHE IS A BRILLIANT WRITER!

As just a side note, before I get into the book, I don’t think that I have ever seen just a versatile author such as Andrews.  She can write an amazing zombie series, a haunting dystopian series, and follow it up with a brilliant, heartbreaking love story.  She is hands down, one of the bests in my eyes.

On to the book…if I had to describe it in one word, that word would be a sounds.  Just a sound because I cannot express to you my feelings of how beautiful, touching, heart wrenching, devastating, and amazing this book was.  One of the things that stood out to be was that all of the Before scenes were told from Rike’s point of view.  It allows the reader to know how much he loves Peyton and all that he is willing to do for her.  All of the After scenes are told from Peyton’s point of view and it shows just how confusing and torturing it is to be in her position at the moment. A great idea to switch the characters out like such and let the reader get to know whom they are falling in love with. 

From one reader to another, I found this book to be an emotional rollercoaster (and I love me some rollercoasters.)  You get the best of one world (the Before) and the worst of the other (the After.)  I found that I really wasn’t emotionally prepared for Andrews brought to the table but I ate it up.  It was AHH-MAZING!

And while this story revolves mostly around Jokes (Rike) and Fish (Peyton), there is another couple that I was thoroughly interesting throughout the book.  Linds and Scott were a great secondary couple that help bring Jokes and Fish to life. 

If you didn’t catch it in my review above, I really loved this book. J It is an absolute must read.