ARC Book Review | After the End by Amy Plum

Series: After the End, # 1

Format: e-ARC

Source: Publisher via Edelweiss

Publisher: HarperTeen

Publication Date: May 6, 2014

Goodreads

　

She’s searching for answers to her past. They’re hunting her to save their future.

World War III has left the world ravaged by nuclear radiation. A lucky few escaped to the Alaskan wilderness. They've survived for the last thirty years by living off the land, being one with nature, and hiding from whoever else might still be out there.

At least, this is what Juneau has been told her entire life.

When Juneau returns from a hunting trip to discover that everyone in her clan has vanished, she sets off to find them. Leaving the boundaries of their land for the very first time, she learns something horrifying: There never was a war. Cities were never destroyed. The world is intact. Everything was a lie.

Now Juneau is adrift in a modern-day world she never knew existed. But while she's trying to find a way to rescue her friends and family, someone else is looking for her. Someone who knows the extraordinary truth about the secrets of her past.

My Thoughts

When I first heard that Amy Plum was coming out with a new dystopian book, I was absolutely ecstatic. I really enjoyed her Revenant series and I had extremely high hopes for her new series. However, while I liked After the End, it didn’t WOW me like I was expecting it to.

Juneau has lived in a tiny community in Alaska her entire life. Her clan was pretty much the only survivors after the World War III back in 1983 and they have lived in the same tiny little community since then, never venturing outside the boundaries. But, when everyone in her clan is taken, it’s up to her to figure out what happened and how to get them back. Yet, when she journeys outside the boundaries of their land, she learns that WWIII never happened and the cities are intact. The only people she has ever known have lied to her, her entire life.

Juneau was a really hard character to relate to. Yeah, I know that she has been lied to her entire life and she has only know the life inside her village but she just seemed a little odd to me. I really didn't feel too much for Miles either. At the beginning we see a spoiled brat who is used to depending on his daddy to get him out of trouble and while he does seem to grow some as a character, I guess it was just a little too late for him to win me over.

It's clear he's lived a sheltered life. And not just sheltered in the fact that he hasn't been brought up in the wilderness like I have. He has lived what Dennis would call 'a fortunate life, unfortunately for the rest of the world," The blissfully ignorant spawn of the rich.

I really didn't get the whole dystopian feel from this book. Yes, at the beginning while Juneau is with her clan shut off from the rest of the world and thinking they were basically the only survivors of a war gave the impression of a dystopian. But, within the first few chapters we learn that it is all a lie and Juneau finds herself in the modern world and after that the whole dystopian vibe sort of went out the window.

Overall, After the End wasn't a story that I was heavily invested in, it was just a little too slow for me and I didn't really have any sort of connection with the characters. While it kills me that I didn't love this book like I did Plum's other series, I understand that I probably won't like every book I read by a beloved author.