REVIEW: After (#1) - Anna Todd

Title: After (#1)
Author: Anna Todd
Series: After
Publisher: Gallery Books
Format: E-Book
Pages: 593 Pages
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Goodreads Blurb

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 disappears 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?

Thoughts

I will admit, I picked this book up from Amazon as I had seen a trailer for the movie, and let's be honest the trailer did kind of seduce me.

I went into this with a little knowledge of the story, that it was first started on Wattpad by Anna Todd, and it was actually a One Direction fanfiction (with Harry Styles being the lead), but reworked fanfiction has worked (E.L James and Fifty Shades).

I went into this not expecting too much, and I was quite surprised by how much I did like the story and the characters.

I found Tessa, to be quite a timid character, she is entering a phase of her life that is going to bring her out of her comfort zone, whereas you have Hardin who is basically a massive a**hole to her, he blows hot and cold at the beginning of their "friendship", but when she turns him down he can't stay away from her.

The relationship between Tessa and Hardin isn't what I would consider my relationship goal, he, as I said, was very hot and cold with her, while she was all in. The book references a lot of the old classics, especially Wuthering Heights which I found that this did slightly mirror

I found the book to be an ode to becoming an adult, you leave all the childish things behind when you move to college/ University, and your eyes are opened to a lot more freedom, which is what we see with Tessa.

Overall, it was a good book, I did enjoy it, but there were bits that I thought were problematic to me.