After the End by Amy Plum

After the End (After the End, #1)

by Amy Plum

Michael Grant's Gone series meets M. Night Shyamalan's The Village in this riveting story of one girl's journey to save the very people who have lied to her for her entire life. Amy Plum, international bestselling author of the Die for Me series, delivers a fast-paced adventure perfect for fans of Marie Lu, Veronica Rossi, and Robison Wells.

Juneau grew up fearing the outside world. The elders told her that beyond the borders of their land in the Alaskan wilderness, nuclear war had destroyed everything. But when Juneau returns from a hunting trip one day and discovers her people have been abducted, she sets off to find them. And leaving the boundaries for the very first time, she learns the horrifying truth: World War III never happened. Nothing was destroyed. Everything she'd ever been taught was a lie.

As Juneau comes to terms with an unfathomable deception, she is forced to survive in a completely foreign world, using only the skills and abilities she developed in the wild. But while she's struggling to rescue her friends and family, someone else is after her. Someone who knows the extraordinary truth about her secret past.

Reviewed by Amber on

2 of 5 stars

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This review was originally posted on Books of Amber

Was anyone else expecting a post-apocalyptic survival novel with this one, or was that just me? I admit, my problem is that I don’t read blurbs before reading books, because I like to go into them surprised and knowing absolutely nothing. So it’s my fault that I went into After the End with unrealistic expectations. But I’m disappointed anyway, because whereas I was looking forward to a survival novel in the Alaskan wilderness but instead it was more of a science fiction thriller, and it was really bloody confusing to begin with.


You clever folk will know that the war that supposedly caused the apocalypse didn’t actually happen, and apparently the main character has been hiding in Alaska for no reason because there’s no radiation? This was a nice surprise for me while reading, but it’s not what I wanted from this book. Oop at me.

In the beginning, Plum’s writing style took a while to get used to. It felt like she was being overly descriptive for no apparent reason, and using too many unnecessary words. Sometimes present tense just doesn’t work for an author, and that was the case here. After a few chapters, I did start to get used to it and I was able to lose myself in the story rather than worry about the author’s writing style, but if I hadn’t been curious about the so-called WWIII, I wouldn’t have continued reading based on the writing.

I really liked Juneau, although she didn’t feel like the most developed character. I did feel sorry for her, because everything she had been told was a lie. Juneau is an interesting and mysterious character, who I’m sure we will learn more about in the sequel, but she’s not very stand-out to me.

The romance in After the End wasn’t instalove, which I appreciated, but it wasn’t exactly slowburn either. I don’t think the two characters, Juneau and Miles, had any chemistry and so their hate-to-love relationship didn’t evoke many feelings from me. Which is a shame, because I love my ships. I just thought their entire progression as enemies and then friends and then as something closer was standard and average and lacking anything to make me squee.

After the End had a bit of a mystery plot, which is really what kept me interested and reading. What is Yara? Who the hell is Whit? How can anything cause a perfect star shape to develop in your eye? I’m probably interested enough to read the sequel, or at least look up spoilers, but I wouldn’t rush to buy it because After the End was practically average in every way and I have no strong feelings about it.

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  • Started reading
  • 1 August, 2014: Finished reading
  • 1 August, 2014: Reviewed