To read an excerpt of the opening of After the Moment click here
This book has received its share of pretty bad blog reviews. Most of them while I (and the novel) were on a blog tour. Lesson learned. Do not tour the internet. However, in the interests of self-promotion, if not full disclosure, I am providing a partial list of blogs that were, shall we say, more welcoming to Leigh and Maia’s doomed love.
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The Novel Bookworm
Bart's Bookshelf
Harmony Book Reviews
The Zen Leaf
Library Lounge Lizard
Stacked
Serenehours
My Friend Amy
Teenreads.com
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An interview I did with Adelson Campus
Some thoughts about the title at the blog Reading Keeps You Sane
After the Moment
Why a boy? Why this boy? Why this book?
A few notes about the cover
As she did in My Heartbeat and Stay with Me, the author creates a wonderful, complicated but loving family for her protagonist. Readers may have difficulty tracking all the characters, but they will understand that each family member is there to support Leigh, from his emotionally challenged father to his romance novelist mother who constantly warns Leigh “that he didn't take enough time for what might please him—for what he wanted.” This is an expertly crafted story about a complicated first love.
- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
As in the Printz Honor Book My Heartbeat and other novels, Freymann-Weyr offers another rare, sophisticated exploration of love at the end of adolescence... Within this story’s raw, honest, psychologically attuned scenes, older teens will find their own aching questions about how best to love, shape a future, and “do the right thing.”
- Booklist (Starred Review)
After the Moment is a beautiful mess of a young-adult novel, with the emphasis on the beautiful... the book's strength lies in its moment by moment grace—and its unerring sense of voice.
- The Boston Globe
After the Moment is a story of first love, but it's so much more. It's a story of perseverance, strength and loyalty, but also of betrayal, pain, and disappointment. It's a story every reader who has loved and lost can relate to, which is the very reason it's not one to be missed
- teensreadtoo.com
Readers who love doomed, tearjerker romances will be enthralled... With its wise writing and literary word choices, this is a smart book...
- Kirkus * for some truth in advertising, see here.
Freymann-Weyr (My Heartbeat and The Kings Are Already Here) specializes in complex characters who nonetheless seem like people we know. "Seem" is the operative word. She takes us in at the surface level and then plunges us into the depths of her characters' inner workings.... Freymann-Weyr asks us to re-evaluate the people we may have underestimated and to acknowledge that sometimes it's not about arriving at the right answers but rather asking the right questions.
- Shelf Awareness
Freymann-Weyr's prose is poetic and insightful... The author has a gift for writing about serious issues, without making the book feel heavy. I think that After the Moment would be a good pick for reluctant teen readers, boys or girls.
- Jen Robinson's Book Page
...An engaging male-coming-of-age tale that explores notions of violence, devotion, and trust against a thought-provoking backdrop of love and war.
- The Horn Book