"Dawn conceals what the dark of night reveals."
After Dark has a lot of my 'bait concepts' - urban fantasy, supernatural creatures, lore, changelings, spunky characters and romance. This book has been on my tbr pile for 9 years and I was so excited to finally pick it up. Unfortunately, the reading experience was underwhelming and disappointing.
After Dark has a lot of story-telling potential. It deals with the idea of a changeling in a totally different way. Mac, the main character, is a changeling, a human by day who can shape shift to any supernatural creature in the night. There's also a council of all powerful supernatural beings along with important decisions and choices that will have a lasting impact on Mac's life.
However, the potential is largely untapped. The concepts in After Dark are extremely interesting, but the execution is not. The plot development is extremely slow and either repetitive events occur or nothing much happens. The plot is lacking and the world is only dealt with on a surface level.
I can tolerate non-existent plots, if the characters keep me reading, but the characters in After Dark aren't great.
Mac, in theory, is the type of character that I have a soft-spot for - spunky and tough on the outside, but vulnerable and soft on the inside. However, the two sides of Mac didn't balance each other out nor did it feel legit. Mac is whiny, judgemental and full of unwarranted attitude and it's difficult to connect with her character or understand her logic.
There's also a few things related to Mac in After Dark that bothered me:
1) Mac goes from hating humans with an intensity that seems alarming to tolerating them without any logical explanation.
2) Mac never questioned her background or the reason for her existence and importance and when she does care, all of a sudden, I'm supposed to believe it.
Mac is a wishy-washy character. She just gets out of the blue epiphanies that completely change her views and behaviour.
The other characters don't add much to After Dark either. I could see where the author wanted her characters to go, but most of them are insignificant or used for comic relief. I couldn't get a sense of the characters personalities, motivations etc. so their actions are extremely confusing.
I also had issues with the romance. I couldn't understand the relationship between Winn and Mac. I don't understand what's so special about him for Mac to get over her hate for humans and I don't understand why Winn even likes Mac. The grounding for their relationship is so fragile.
I thought that I would love After Dark and I'm so disappointed. After Dark could have been awesome, but it really missed the mark.