The Beginning of After by Jennifer Castle
Anyone who’s had something truly crappy happen to them will tell you: It’s all about Before and After. What I’m talking about here is the ka-pow, shake-you-to-your-core-and-turn-your-bones-to-plastic kind of crappy.
Sixteen-year-old Laurel’s world changes instantly when her parents and brother are killed in a terrible car accident. Behind the wheel is the father of her bad-boy neighbor, David Kaufman, whose mother is also killed. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Laurel navigates a new reality in which she and her best friend grow apart, boys may or may not be approaching her out of pity, overpowering memories lurk everywhere, and Mr. Kaufman is comatose but still very much alive. Through it all there is David, who swoops in and out of Laurel’s life and to whom she finds herself attracted against her better judgment. She will forever be connected to him by their mutual loss—a connection that will change them both in unexpected ways.
Jennifer Castle’s debut novel is a heart-wrenching, surprisingly witty testament to how drastically life can change in the span of a single moment.~Goodreads
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If you know me, you would know that I have a love/hate relationship with all of her books. My biggest complaint and one of the things I like about her books is that they all move very slowly. I like that it provokes so much thought and really feels like literature and a book worth keeping instead of a real quick romance that you’ll forget about in a few weeks. And when I picked up The Beginning of After I had heard that Jennifer Castle was similar to Sarah Dessen. So needless to say I was really excited.
Laurel just lost her mother, father, and brother due to a terrible accident in a car that their neighbor was driving. Laurel has to deal with living in a house that holds countless reminders of her family, a friend that she feels is drifting away, and interacting with the guilty man’s son. I don’t know about you but I think I would hole myself up in my room for all eternity and not come out till judgement day. But that's not what she does. Laurel being the strong, brave and normal-seeking girl she is, jumps back into her life days after this horrible tragedy. Laurel loves animals, and beneath the sad and thoughtful exterior you see a girl that just wants to be “cool” and have her crush notice her. I think this little tidbit lessened the book for me. I mean your family has died you have all these things going on and you still want to be noticed by the snobs and get a guys attention? It made her feel a little shallow to me.
Daniel the guilty man’s son, and Joe her crush both pull at Laurel and gives this book a bona fide love triangle. Daniel deals with his grief by running. His mother died in that same car crash and the impact put his father into a coma. Joe the awkward guy that draws superheroes notices Laurel for the first time after she starts school again. And don’t get me started with her best friend Meg. The whole situation seems doomed. Can a teenage girl-life long friend or not- deal with kind of change in Laurel’s life? Can Meg and Laurel get through their own problems to see the other one is hurting and needs a hand? This situation demonstrates a persons selfishness and how, even though they don’t see it, they can be so absorbed in their own troubles not to notice someone elses.
The Beginning of After is a study in grief and how life moves on. It showcases the most unlikely of romances without that being the sole purpose of the book. And I definitely recommend it to Sarah Dessen fans.
~Rain
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“That's the whole thing about grieving... It's part of the deal: You get to be alive and to love, but in exchange you also have to put in some serious hurt time.”
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The Pitcher
“I never knew I had an arm until this guy called out, “Hey you want to try and get a ball in the hole, sonny?” I was only nine, but mom said, “come on, let’s play.” This Carney guy with no teeth and a fuming cigarette hands me five blue rubber balls and says if I throw three in the hole we win a prize. He’s grinning, because he took mom’s five bucks and figures a sucker is born every minute. That really got me, because we didn’t have any money after Fernando took off, and he only comes back to beat up mom and steal our money. So I really wanted to get mom back something, you know, for her five bucks.”
A boy with a golden arm but no money for lessons. A mother who wants to give her son his dream before she dies. A broken down World Series pitcher who cannot go on after the death of his wife. These are the elements of The Pitcher. A story of a man at the end of his dream and a boy whose dream is to make his high school baseball team. In the tradition of The Natural and The Field of Dreams, this is a mythic story about how a man and a boy meet in the crossroads of their life and find a way to go on. You will laugh and you will cry as The Pitcher and Ricky prepare for the ultimate try out of life.
Author William Hazelgrove
William Hazelgrove is the best selling author of five novels, Ripples, Tobacco Sticks Mica Highways and Rocket Man and The Pitcher His books have received starred reviews in Publisher Weekly, Book of the Month Selections, Junior Library Guild Selections, ALA Editors Choice Awards and optioned for the movies. He was the Ernest Hemingway Writer in Residence where he wrote in the attic of Ernest Hemingway’s birthplace. He has written articles and reviews for USA Today and other publications. His latest novel Rocket Man due out May 1, 2013 was chosen Book of the Year by Books and Authors.net. He runs a political cultural blog, The View From Hemingway’s Attic. A forthcoming novel, The Pitcher will be out Sept 1, 2013. He lives in Chicago.
