The After Girls

Gr 9 Up—After high school graduation, Ella and Sydney are looking forward to their last summer with their friend Astrid. Then Astrid commits suicide, and their world is shattered. The teens each find different ways to cope and slowly begin to drift apart. Sydney resorts to drinking away her sorrows, while Ella suffers from sleepless nights afflicted with nightmares about Astrid's death. When she begins to receive messages and phone calls from their dead friend, Sydney thinks she's crazy, but Ella grows determined to solve the mysteries surrounding their friend and the reasons behind her death. The characters' background information is sporadically revealed and poorly integrated, and the plot is excessively drawn out. The choppy writing and underdeveloped relationships make the story difficult to get through. The ending has some redeeming qualities, but teens are unlikely to keep reading past the first few chapters. The plot is reminiscent of varying aspects of Sara Shepard's Pretty Little Liars (HarperCollins, 2006) and Laurie Halse Anderson's Wintergirls (Viking, 2009), but does not live up to either.—Candyce Pruitt-Goddard, Hartford Public Library, CT