Laurel’s life has two distinct halves: the before and the after. The before is where we’re dropped when we begin Castle’s story, and it’s a very short part of the story. Laurel and her family are on their way across town for dinner with a family they’ve been friends with for a while. That family’s son, David, had been friends with Laurel when they were younger, but as they grew up, they grew apart. Laurel became more reserved and driven toward attending the best college she could, while David became a bit of a wild, rebellious teen. It wasn’t that they hated each other. It was just that they were so different.

Those are the few things we get in Laurel’s beginning.

After dinner, Laurel decides she needs to go home and study for her exams, rather than join the families on a trip out for something sweet. David, too, decides not to go out and keeps to himself at home that evening. For both of them, the decision seems light, but the reality is, it’s the decision that saves their lives.

Jennifer Castle’s debut novel, The Beginning of After, explores what happens when someone loses everything they have. Laurel and David both lose their families in a car wreck that night, and it’s a car wreck that has no definite cause. David’s father is the lone survivor of the incident, but he is unconscious for the bulk of the story. The police and community have been pointing their fingers at him, suggesting that his drinking at dinner that evening may have been the fault for the accident, but the truth of the matter is, this aspect of the story doesn’t matter. Instead, we’re meant to focus on Laurel and David’s recovery and the way their worlds shift dramatically when they’re made to grow up very quickly.

What I appreciated about this book was that, despite being a story about two people dealing with tragedy, it is single voiced. We only hear from Laurel in the story, which means we’re given a one-sided perspective. Part of why this worked for me was that the book was very, very long for what it was. Had David had the opportunity to chime in, it would have gone on far longer than I would have given it time for. More than that, though, is that I felt Laurel had an interesting grieving process. She was upset, and she let us in on it. But the thing was, she wasn’t a big physical reactor to the situation; instead, much of her grieving came in the form of internal dialog. Sure, she cries, but she doesn’t break down over and over. Instead, she keeps going on. She doesn’t let herself drown in her misery from the beginning.

However, Laurel is far from a perfect character. Frankly, I found her kind of boring and a bit lopsided in her thinking. Where I understand that grief is an all-consuming emotion, I felt like a lot of Laurel’s actions and thoughts weren’t necessary nor were they necessarily fluid. In one scene, she talks about loving her best friend’s home because it reminded her of what catalogs looked like: things were clean and new, and the furniture and dishes all went together. She says in the same breath that she dislikes that her house looks like a collection of mismatched items and a warehouse to eclectia. A few chapters later, Laurel mourns losing her mother and her mother’s sense of style. She does the flip of what she’d reminisced about before, suggesting that she loves nothing more than the strange style going on at home. While it’s believable to mourn for the loss of her mother via her mother’s strange style, it also seems like a strange comment earlier to say she hated it and preferred (that’s the key word) her friend’s home styling. These little details added up to a lot of inconsistencies when it came to character and to voice in Laurel, which made her lopsided and kind of boring to me. I never got to know who she was.

Part of the problem in getting to know her, I think, came from the fact that this book takes off in action quickly. We only see her in the “before” at dinner. We don’t know really how she interacts with other people, nor do we know exactly how she felt about her family before they were gone. Instead, we’re only given true insight in the after, which is a single sided view of things. When I think about books that deal with a heavy topic like Castle’s, I can’t help but compare to Gayle Forman’s stunning If I Stay. We’re given insight into the before and into the after with enough fluidity that we can distinguish true feeling from Mia. Here, we have to buy Laurel in her grief. We can only buy Laurel in her grief.

Because of this, I never was able to believe in the relationship that happens between Laurel and David throughout the novel. While they’re grieving simultaneously – and David has the added weight of a comatose father who may have been responsible for the entire mess – they’re also developing a strange relationship that is far from a romance and far from a friendship. Laurel becomes a sort of caretaker for the things David is too inept to deal with (his dog, specifically) and then near the end of the book, they decide to come close in partaking in the now cliché grief sex. David was, to put it bluntly, an asshole throughout the entire book, and I couldn’t wrap my head around why Laurel would find this something worth pursuing (the sex, not the relationship as a whole). The thing that jarred me about it was that it was seemingly out of nowhere. For such a hefty book, I really expected more of a fleshed out relationship between the two of them that would warrant that sort of action; moreover, I hoped for consistency in Laurel’s development as a character, as that, too, would had aided in making this a potentially powerful scene, rather than one that felt cliché.

Of all the characters in the book, I found Masher, the dog, to be the most interesting. He’s had a traumatic life being shipped between homes, and I couldn’t help but feel bad for how poorly he was treated throughout. I wanted to like Laurel and I wanted to care about her growth and movement in the after, I couldn’t. It felt like she wore gauze over herself, and she made it hard for me to get to know her. David, as I said, isn’t given a whole lot of page time, and in the time he is given, he doesn’t make himself out to be the kind of character worth investing much into. I was expecting to experience a wealth of emotions reading this novel, as it has the set up to give me a ride, but it didn’t.

This isn’t an easy book to read, and it requires quite an investment, as it’s probably about 200 pages longer than it needs to be. I think a lot of the character development and story arc could have been tightened through shortening the book. There were too many opportunities for subplots and inconsistencies to pop up, and it was when I found those moments that I found myself liking the characters and story less.

I think fans of contemporary lit will be split on this one, and I think the split will come in how widely they’ve read in the genre. Those who have read books like Forman’s may find this a weak entry into the field, but those who have enjoyed tragedy via Lurlene McDaniel may find this a worthwhile read alike. I think those who enjoy Elizabeth Scott’s heavier books will appreciate The Beginning of After, as well as those who like Sarah Dessen.

Review copy received from the publisher. The Beginning of After will be available September 6.

Sometimes you read a book that just leaves you a little breathless. One that you go into expecting something and leave having taken a lot more than you thought you would. That was the experience in reading CK Kelly Martin’s latest, My Beating Teenage Heart.

From the beginning of the story, we’re kept distant. We know we’re being talked to by Ashlyn, who is unsure of who she is or where she is. She feels like she’s falling from the atmosphere, but she has no sense of her body or her purpose, but she immediately latches onto Breckon. He’s lying in bed, broken, and she knows that she needs to see his story. For some reason, Ashlyn believes her story is also part of his story, and for her to understand this place she’s in, she needs to follow Breckon.

At this point — after only a couple of chapters — I began envisioning a story much like Amy Huntley’s The Everafter. It’s a similar premise from the beginning, but Martin’s story telling led me to believe she’d take me something different, new and unexplored, and she did.

Ashlyn begins revealing more and more about herself as she begins to see more about Breckon. He’s just lost his sister, but as readers, we’re not savvy as to how she died. He’s in deep mourning, and he blames himself for the loss. Through this blame, Ashlyn experiences moments of complete recollection about her own life. As readers, we learn she’s been through something horrible, something unimaginable. But it’s been so removed from her in this afterlife that she experiences the pain again both within herself and as she begins to understand and sympathize with what Breckon experiences with his sister.

My Beating Teenage Heart is not a straight up contemporary novel, nor is it a strict fantasy. It’s more speculative, and it treads the lines between the two genres. Going into the book is a little overwhelming, but it has to be. Since Ashlyn’s the initial narrator, and since she’s suspended in a place she doesn’t understand, we don’t get a completely clear sense of story from the beginning. But that’s what drives the novel. The topics covered in the story are incredibly emotional, and as readers, we’re able to easily trust Martin to tackle these things gracefully.

I bring up the trust issue because that’s an essential element to making this story work. I’ve read many books with this idea before — where someone begins to piece together their life in the afterlife — but because Ashlyn is easy to immediately connect with and because she so strongly develops an interest in Breckon, who is alive and yet suffering from something earth shattering, I knew the story would travel to somewhere unexpected. And it did. Breckon and Ashlyn have a connection to one another, but it was a completely unexpected and effectively executed.

Martin’s writing style is fluid, and even though we’re given both the voices of Breckon and of Ashlyn, both are believable and dynamic enough to differentiate their stories. I mourned with Breckon, and I mourned with Ashlyn, too. The unraveling of her story in particular is smooth and the suspense building well played. I cared deeply about both of these characters and their stories. Voice is always my biggest power tool in a good book — I can get into any genre if there’s a powerful voice behind the story, and without doubt, My Beating Teenage Heart captures two incredible voices. Even if the story had fallen apart or taken me somewhere I’d been before, I could have forgiven it based on this element alone. Fortunately, we get a story here, too.

Here’s the only spoiler I will give about the book: you’ll need a kleenex or two for the last chapter. The way it comes together is not only powerful, but the language, the sentences, the words — they’re all the big players here. Many readers and writers believe that a lot of writing is itself about the act of writing, and it’s here that Martin really puts the message out there. It’s a hopeful ending, too, though not necessarily one that’s rock solid. It’s a little messy, leaving the reader a bit suspended at the end as well.

Pass this along to your fans of contemporary stories like If I Stay or Before I Die, as well as those who have enjoyed books like Huntley’s The Everafter, Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, and Gabrielle Zevin’s Elsewhere. This book is powerful and intense, and it is frank in sexual situations, as well as in other difficult to read topics (I won’t mention in detail since they’re all key to the unraveling of the story). Death is a heavy topic here, not a light one, but Martin’s storytelling will satisfy readers. I think this is an easy sell to not only teens, but adult readers, too. My Beating Teenage Heart is easily at the top of my 2011 favorites list.

Review copy received from publisher. My Beating Teenage Heart will be available September 27. Check back Friday for a chance to win a copy here!