âLaura Wiessâs masterful prose kept me turning the pages. This is the first book in a very long time that made me say, âWish Iâd written thisââ (Ellen Hopkins, author of Crank, on Such a Pretty Girl).
Laura Wiess captures the visceral emotion of a girlâs journey from innocence to devastating loss and, ultimately, to a strange and unexpected kind of understandingâin this beautiful and painfully honest new novel.
Are there any answers when someone you love makes a tragic choice?
Before and After. Thatâs how Rowan Areno sees her life now. Before: she was a normal sixteen-year-oldâa little too sheltered by her police officer father and her mother. After: everything she once believed has been destroyed in the wake of a shattering tragedy, and every day is there to be survived.
If she had known, on that Friday in March when she cut school, that a random strangerâs shocking crime would have traumatic consequences, she never would have left campus. If the crime video never went viral, maybe she could have saved her mother, grandmotherâand herselfâfrom the endless replay of heartache and grief.
Finding a soul mate in Eli, a witness to the crime who is haunted by losses of his own, Rowan begins to see there is no simple, straightforward path to healing wounded hearts. Can she learn to trust, hope, and believe in happiness again?