This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
REVIEWED BY AMANDA KEATSI personally requested to read Afterwards as Lupton's debut book Sister was easily my favourite book of the last few years and I was excited to see what her second book would be like. I am happy to say that, despite her having set the bar so high with Sister, Afterwards manages to hold it's head up high throughout. The one thing I would say is that the information about it on the blurb and press info etc does something not normally found with book releases – it holds too much back.
So I will break with tradition and actually tell you the plot of the first couple of chapters (spoiler alert). All that is said about the book is that there is a fire and Grace runs into the building to rescue her daughter Jenny who she knows is inside. Then afterwards (hence the title) she must find the identity of the arsonist and protect her children. What isn't said is that Grace blacks out amongst the choking fumes of the fire when something falls on her and wakes up walking around a hospital. A little odd you might think until she begins searching for her daughter and gets angry as nobody responds to her pleas. Then she sees her daughter lying in a hospital bed and covered in horrific burns. Then she hears a voice behind her… “Mum?”
What follows is a gripping tale of crumbling relationships, emotions stretched to their limits and a mystery with so many red herrings the smell of fish comes off the pages. Who was responsible for the fire and did they target Jenny or was it just bad timing that she was in there? And will little brother Adam ever speak again after what he has seen?
Firstly, do not be put off by the ghostly element of the book. What Lupton manages to do is focus on the emotion of it all and never really gets caught up in the spiritual side. Instead, she focuses on the frustration of being able to see everything happening to your loved ones and not have the power to reach them. Grace is trying to protect her daughter by sheltering her from what is really going on and watches her husband try to make sense of what has happened and constantly divide up his time between wife and daughter. She also watches in frustration as her husband struggles to be there for their son too. But she also sees a side to people she hasn't seen before… because when people don't know you're in the room they stop pretending.
Grace is not alone in her search for the truth as other family members and friends all start to shed some light on what really happened that day.
This book grabs you with a terrifying opener and does not let you go until the very end. It certainly passed my tube test – this one was close to impossible to put down.
I give it a 9/10 simply because it left me feeling a little depressed but there is no doubt that Lupton is THE author to watch for gripping stories that explore human emotion in a very real and honest way. Her books do not come with a neat and happy conventional ending but they are all the richer for it.
9/10