Pages: 304
Published: April 2nd 2013 by Sourcebooks Fire
Series: N/A – Stand Alone
Source: Borrowed from the library
Lucy just had the worst week ever. Seriously, mega bad. And suddenly, it’s all too much—she wants out. Out of her house, out of her head, out of her life. She wants to be a whole new Lucy. So she does something the old Lucy would never dream of.And now her life will never be the same. Now, how will she be able to have a boyfriend? What will she tell her friends? How will she face her family?
Now her life is completely different…every moment is a gift. Because now she might not have many moments left.
My Life After Now was completely off my radar until Ashley from Nose Graze posted her review and then I NEEDED to read this. It sounded like the type of book that would just leave my in pieces at the end, and I adore those type of raw, emotional reads. I was completely intrigued that the main character has HIV, and knew I just had to read her story.
When I first started My Life After Now, the main character immediately reminded me of Rachel Berry from Glee. She was a superstar at school, in theatre, had two Dads and was dating the male star of the theatre group. Further along I realized that Lucy is much different but I wanted to share my initial reaction to her character. The strangest thing about Lucy is that she didn’t capture my heart like I thought she would. I really liked her as the main character; I thought she was incredibly realistic and raw and I enjoyed her but I wasn’t super attached to her. That being said, my feelings towards Lucy didn’t take anything away from the story, which I really loved because it’s rare when I don’t fall in love with the main character but love the story. The two characters that I DID adore were Lucy’s Dad’s. I LOVED them. One, the family dynamic was remarkable and it’s so, so rare to have the main characters family entirely present in books lately. They were incredibly supportive of Lucy and were on board with her the second they found out she had HIV. For the most part I really liked all of the people in Lucy’s life(except Ty). Her friends, her HIV Support Group, they were all wonderful and well crafted characters.
The story itself is absolutely heart wrenching. It isn’t a sad story, but it’s realistic and scary and will make you cry. Jessica Verdi did an amazing job at writing this story. The emotions that were on every page were just enough to want to make you stop and sob to yourself. It’s such a beautiful story she has written and one that needed to be told. It’s not often you read a story about a picture perfect teenager that is suddenly faced with a life threatening illness that was easily preventable. Actually, make this the first time I have read about it. I think it’s a great story for teenagers to know that something like this could happen to anyone.
I applaud Jessica Verdi for telling such a realistic and beautiful story. Her writing is remarkable and her characters were so believable that you are entirely engaged in Lucy’s journey. I highly recommend you pick up My Life After Now. I’ll definitely be picking up whatever she comes out with next.
This book was recently recommended to me, and I saw it on sale for the kindle, so I grabbed it, even though I knew very little about it in actuality. It sounds sad and moving, so I think I’ll like this one(even if it does make me cry).
It’s incredibly moving! It’s such a great read, and totally totally different from any other YA I’ve seen! I can’t wait to see what you think of it Stormy!