After We Fell - Review

After We Fell (After #3)

By: Anna Todd

Published: November 25, 2014 by Gallery Books

849 pages

Genre: New Adult, Romance, Contemporary

Source: Personal Kindle Library

(Goodreads / Amazon)

Summary:

Book 3 of the After series—newly revised and expanded, Anna Todd's After fanfiction racked up 1 billion reads online and captivated readers across the globe. Experience the internet's most talked-about book for yourself from the writer Cosmopolitan called “the biggest literary phenomenon of her generation.”

Tessa and Hardin’s love was complicated before. Now it’s more confusing than ever. AFTER WE FELL...Life will never be the same. #HESSA

Just as Tessa makes the biggest decision of her life, everything changes. Revelations about first her family, and then Hardin’s, throw everything they knew before in doubt and makes their hard-won future together more difficult to claim.

Tessa’s life begins to come unglued. Nothing is what she thought it was. Not her friends. Not her family. The one person she should be able to rely on, Hardin, is furious when he discovers the massive secret she’s been keeping. And rather than being understanding, he turns to sabotage.

Tessa knows Hardin loves her and will do anything to protect her, but there’s a difference between loving someone and being able to have them in your life. This cycle of jealousy, unpredictable anger, and forgiveness is exhausting. She’s never felt so intensely for anyone, so exhilarated by someone’s kiss—but is the irrepressible heat between her and Hardin worth all the drama? Love used to be enough to hold them together. But if Tessa follows her heart now, will it be...the end?

MY REVIEW:
As much as I have grown to absolutely adore Hardin and Tessa.....this installment of the series irritated me, frustrated me, annoyed me at various times but yet, I still read quickly through without stopping, or so it seemed. These books are very graphic so that's nothing new, but it felt a bit overdone to me in this one. Perhaps it was my annoyance with the characters and their decisions but it just felt very gratuitous the majority of the time.

Hardin and Tessa are far from having a healthy relationship. Hardin doesn't know how to communicate, he doesn't know how to show love, he retaliates with hurtful words and actions when he's wounded emotionally, he's impulsive and irrational. Tessa is immature and reacts to Hardin by making him jealous, though that's something they both tend to do. Hardin still lies and keeps things from Tessa but Tessa also has started to do the same thing. Basically through the majority of this story I felt like their relationship was doomed and began to wonder that perhaps the end result for them would not be a happily-ever-after.

This isn't a fairy tale love story. This is all kinds of messed up and dysfunctional, borderline abusive at times. However, we see moments and glimpses of hope and positive leaps in the right direction. It's not that Hardin is incapable of loving someone in a healthy way, it's that he didn't have that example growing up with his own parents and his messed up childhood has formed the man he is. He's having to learn along the way. In the process of his learning he messes up constantly. Tessa isn't much better. Her childhood was a broken home as well and her mother has always controlled her life. So even though she's in a better place emotionally, she's still having to work through her own mistakes.

Add to their already strenuous relationship an alcoholic father on both sides, but one that hasn't overcome his additions. Add in Zed who wants Tessa just as much as Hardin does and is playing at his own game. Add in friends who are deceitful and liars. It's just a mess all around.

Can Hardin and Tessa survive so many obstacles that constantly come between them? Can their love, however flawed, overcome the mistakes of their past, and continued mistakes of their present?

Check out my review for books one and two.

Top Favorite Quotes:
"You know, there's a big difference between not being able to live without someone and loving them."

That stubborn, obnoxious, uncompromising girl is my entire world.

"You're my better place, Tess."

It's because of Hardin. Wherever he is will always feel like home to me.

I don't want a "regular" boyfriend - I want Hardin, with his crude humor and sour attitude, to take me on simple dates every once in a while and make me feel secure enough in our relationship that the downs will be washed away by the ups.

"Tessa's is the only opinion that matters. Let hers be the only voice in your head."

Language: 3 (high)
Mature Content: 3 (high)
Final Rating: 4