After Hours

by Claire Kennedy

[Leah]

After Hours has been on my Kindle for ages – way longer than it should have been, but not as long as some books I’ve owned (I am a terrible book hoarder – I get so excited for a book, buy it as soon as it’s out and then don’t read it for fifty years). As soon as I started After Hours, I loved the premise. The simple idea of a bunch of restaurant workers doing secret dares to win a pot of money every fortnight sounded so, so intriguing to me.

Let me be clear – the entire cast of After Hours are pretty unlikeable people, with the exception of Peter. Peter I liked. But Isa, Finn, even Xavi, had their horrible/weird moments. I was so impressed with Xavi to start and then when she did what Rico asked, I kinda lost interest a bit. Peer pressure sucks, and it’s a bummer, but I had way more faith in Xavi than she had in herself. Finn and Isa were just horrific. Like legit bad people. We’re talking about two incredibly manipulative 17 year olds and it was just like wow, are they real? (I know, they’re *not* real but you know what I mean!) But I also kinda wanted to know more about Finn – how did he get into the situation he got in? I wanted more about Isa’s past being a pageant queen. So I didn’t like them, but I was super intrigued.

The whole concept of the Tips – that you buy in, everyone then puts their name in a hat and if you’re picked you do a dare and if you fail the dare, the pot rolls over and if you do the dare you win the money was brilliant. I would have liked more dares, rather than the background stuff, especially since all the background stuff (Finn’s job, Isa’s past, etc) wasn’t really dug into enough – it was there, it just wasn’t filled out enough.

Overall though After Hours was a pretty entertaining read. I really enjoyed it, I raced through it and while I didn’t love the characters, I loved the concept, the plot, the restaurant setting. It was such an easy book to read, with short, sharp chapters. I just really enjoyed the book, and it made me wonder why *my* teen years were so freaking dull. Boy, did I miss out, eh?!