After the End audiobook

Well... colour me surprised.I don't know what I expected from After the End (though probably not much after reading the reviews of Die for Me) but I definitely didn't expect a book that had me glued to the pages, awake most of the night reading, and laughing out loud on almost every page in the middle section. I had braced myself for "yet another dystopia" and got something more like an entertaining, fast-paced urban fantasy. Survival. That’s all that’s important. My own survival, and that of my father and clan. I will do anything to guarantee it. And I will use whoever I need to achieve it. This book starts in the Alaskan wilderness where Juneau has spent her entire life in a small, isolated community. World War III has completely destroyed the world we know and left only this small group of survivors who have managed to stay alive by being at one with nature. Or... that's what Juneau has always been told anyway.But one day she returns from a hunt to discover that her clan has completely disappeared. Using the powers of nature that she has been taught, Juneau sets out to find them. However, she soon discovers that there is more to the world than what she's always been told. Finding out that the people she trusted the most have been lying to her is a hard pill to swallow, but Juneau has even bigger problems. The people who kidnapped her clan members are after her and she has no idea why. Chased down everywhere she goes, Juneau is forced to team up with an unlikely companion in order to find her family.I have to be honest: I can see straight away why this book won't be to everyone's liking. Almost all of the exhilarating action occurs in the first and last quarters of the book - this is the heart-pounding, ohmigod-how-will-they-get-out-of-this portion of the book. Despite dystopias being forced down our throats left, right and centre, I found this story extremely compelling and I loved how different the two main characters were. But, yes, the biggest chunk of the book in the middle is about a road trip full of bickering, basic survival/camping skills and the development of the relationship between Juneau and Miles.And I loved it.I am so not a big romance person. Or at least not in books that are supposed to be action-packed science fiction. But I found the banter between Juneau and Miles truly hilarious. I had to cover my mouth to avoid waking the whole house up with my giggling. They're just such different people. She's a hardcore hunter who's grown up in the wilderness and knows all about survival and taking care of herself... and he's a guy who got kicked out of high school for cheating on an exam. She thinks he's stupid. He thinks she's crazy. Their conversations were a delight to read.“The guys who are following you . . . are they dangerous?” Miles asks finally.“Well, normally I would say that Whit wouldn’t hurt a flea. But from what Poe here told me—”“Poe?” Miles interrupts.“The raven,” I say.“You named the bird?” Miles asks, his voice tinged with a note of hysteria.Yet another reason for him to think I’m crazy, I think, and wonder again if that’s not actually a good thing. “Back in Alaska, we named all our animals after literary figures. It was something our teacher Dennis started, so I was thinking that with Edgar Allan Poe’s poem about the raven—”“Yes, thank you . . . I got the reference!” he snaps. His face is flushed red, but he does this deep-breathing thing and calms down a little. “Okay, first of all, we’re not keeping the bird. So don’t name it. I am not driving you to wherever it is we’re going with a wild animal in my backseat.”“He’s not wild,” I protest.“Has it shit on my shirt yet?” Miles asks, his nose wrinkling like he doesn’t really want to know the answer.I ship them so hard.And more than this, I really liked the idea behind the story. No spoilers, of course, but I just thought I'd mention how pleasantly surprised I am to find that I can still fall in love with a dystopian book. For me, this book was incredibly addictive and the characters shone with a rare level of personality. My only real issue was with the ending, which seemed a little abrupt. But, oh well, who cares? I really enjoyed it.Blog | Leafmarks | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr

Did it say this book is by Amy freakin Plum??Well God damn Amy freakin Plum, i still cant get past that shit.Edit: Andddd Amy Plum Slays again!!! - 4.5 stars

So this book was unlike any book I've ever read.Now I don't want to bore people with my thoughts, but that's the whole purpose of reviewing. This book was surprisingly spiritual and philosophical, I know it's a science fiction and a lot of the stuff that happened is "impossible".I think most people believe or would like to believe that they are part of a higher or divine power, that there is something or someone out there looking out for us. That we aren't just beings alone randomly placed on this earth by chance. After the End by Amy Plum is that kind of book, it's really just about how powerful believing can be and how debilitating it can be if our entire belief system was taken away. What if everything you believed in was a lie, or what if you had reason to question it. What if your entire existence depends on whether or not you believe.Fuck. This is sounding like a church sermon, don't let my review mislead you. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, perhaps I can start my review. I don't know what I believe anymore. What's right and what's wrong. For me, there are no more rules. I will do anything I need to rescue my clan, no matter who it hurts. Let's face it people, we live in a greedy world, everyone wants a piece of the pie or at least a finger in it. Juneau, lives at one with the earth, she and her clan live apart from the rest of the world. The world the elders and her mentor, Whit have told her about is harsh. She returns from a hunt to find her village abandoned, not a person in sight, and she decides to search for her clan. It's in her search that her entire world literally comes crashing down around her. The people she's trusted her entire life are not what they seem and she doesn't know who she can trust. I don't know this place where friends are the bad guys and even this boy sitting next to me can't be trusted. The rules are different. I have faced bears, wolves, snakes, and ice storms. And for the first time in my life, I'm truly scared, I admit. So while searching for her clan, she meets Miles, a boy she's supposed to meet. Okay, that makes absolutely no sense so here goes, I'm not a pro at this science fiction stuff. She learns via an oracle that Miles will help her in her search and in rescuing her clan, almost like a prophecy but live.So like any good book, there are hurdles along the way which are quickly overcome(this book was sorely lacking in suspense because of this). And a little bit of romance, definitely no insta-love here people. I think many might disagree but seeing as this is a YA novel, I think maybe some of the subject matter was a little heavy, that is if you read between the lines. I can't imagine a 16 year old me taking much away from this book, thing is there's so much more to this book than adventure and science fiction, or whatever you'd like to call it.Now on the subject of that bloody cliffy at the end, I can't actually believe that the author would leave us hanging like that! I mean OMG!!! The rationale part of my brain knows how that I probably have absolutely nothing to worry about! But tell that to the irrational part of my brain!

Review originally posted at: http://mostlyyalit.blogspot.ca/2014/0...Guys, I was really surprised by this one. It is not what you're going to expect at all. I expected it to be sort of like a contemp, a fish out of water story with Juneau integrating into society. Instead, I got a pretty awesome conspiracy thriller with some supernatural/sci-fi elements thrown in. I really liked it.Here's the story: Juneau is a seventeen-year-old who is happily living with her clan in the wilds of Alaska after World War III turned the rest of Earth into a nuclear wasteland. Juneau is poised to become the next "sage", or leader of the clan, because she has great skill in connecting to the Yara, which is the lifeforce that connects all beings and elements. But soon after she takes off on a hunting trip, she returns to her camp to find everyone gone, their animals slaughtered. She sets off on a journey to try to find the rest of her clan, and quickly discovers that WWIII never happened, and the world has advanced without her. Worse, she's now being pursued by thugs, and she's not sure why. Meanwhile, Miles Blackwell is trying to get back into his father's good graces - Miles is a rich brat who's gotten into a lot of trouble at school. When he hears that his father is chasing Juneau, he sets off to find her on his own in the hopes of getting his father to help him get into Yale and put things back to normal.Ok, so first of all, the characters. The book alternates between first-person narration from Juneau and Miles. Right away, you know that Juneau is going to be pretty kick-butt. She can hunt, she can fish, she can totally live off the land. She's a badass. But what I really liked about her was that she was also wonderfully fleshed-out in the ways that she reacted to the 2014 world , and how she persevered in spite of feeling manipulated and lied to. She was never once a woe-is-me character, but she did have a lot of reflection time, and I was fascinated by how much she learned about how she wanted to live versus how people live in 2014.Miles is slightly less cool than Juneau - he's kind of your typical spoiled rich kid. But he's also a guy with a good heart who's willing to learn and see past his own idiocy to become a better guy. Also, he's pretty funny. I enjoyed his voice through the novel.The thing is, even though you don't know THAT much about Miles and Juneau, you really connect with them and their self-discovery. One of the best parts of the novel was how well everything fit together with Miles and Juneau's journeys and the overarching plot. It all weaves together quite beautifully. A big part of that weaving has to do with the supernatural elements in the story. I'm not usually a fan of that stuff (you guys know how I like my contemps!), but I really liked the magic elements and manipulation of nature in this book, because it was well-explained and really seemed to make sense for the book and the world-building. It was also incredibly fundamental to who Juneau was as a person, and it played so nicely into the end of the novel. I don't want to say more than that.If I have complaints, they are that 1) the ending was a little rushed, and 2) the romance resolved a little more quickly than I would have liked. Both the ending and the romance were a little too on-point , a little too much of the author telling you what the characters have realized. Despite that (I know I'm going to be shot for this), I really kind of liked the ending (it's a cliffhanger!). We know there's more and it felt like the natural place for a cliffhanger if you are going to do one.After the End is a super-fast read - I got through it in about four hours, and I found the pace to be quick. There were only a few moments when I was like, "Ok, I get the idea of this part, moving on" - and just as I thought that, the switch was flipped and something changed. So yeah, Amy Plum, you totally anticipated my thoughts! Bonuses:  Source: Pinterest Smooth, Divergent-like Writing: I really liked the writing in After the End - it totally reminded me of Veronica Roth with its simple, strong sentences. But those sentences are also punctuated with gorgeous descriptions that really fit the voices of the characters. The metaphors and similes they used totally suited them. Have some quotes! "Through the mosquito net I see the dew-kissed world around us turn rosy pink in the blush of daybreak. There was no war. There are no brigands. I remind myself that an apocalyptic world war never happened. But that image is such an integral part of me that this new world seems like the tall tale--a fairy-tale world, wrapped loosely like colorful paper around the burned-out husk of a postwar planet." "Juneau looks at me inquisitively like she's wondering whether I'm going to cry, but those rivers have dried, and it's only the furrows they carved into my heart that are left." The Final Word:  To me, After the End would be great for fans of Patrick Ness' The Knife of Never Letting Go, and Rick Yancey's The 5th Wave. It's a fast-paced twist on the usual post-apocalyptic thriller, with great writing and plotting that holds together well. I'll definitely be picking up book two!

Although I’m a big fan of Amy Plum’s Revenants series, I started After the End with no small amount of trepidation. Writers are sometimes more than just defined by their first story, they get stuck writing endless variations of it, unable to find their voice elsewhere. For whatever reason, I feared that Plum might be one of those authors. Boy, was I ever wrong.I’ve had little time to read and even less patience for it lately, being preoccupied with finishing my thesis in time. Therefore, finding something to read that would make me drop everything else and focus on it entirely proved to be incredibly hard. And yet, I started After the End at 9 pm, and finished it that very same night.The idea of someone’s life being built entirely on lies fascinated me to no end. Juneau was raised believing that World War III ended the world as we know it in 1984, leaving just a few survivors scattered around the planet. Her small clan supposedly found salvation in Alaskan wilderness, far away from civilization and technology. Through their close connection with nature, they developed certain powers that others would love to exploit. And Juneau, being the most powerful among them, is the most important father.As the son of a pharmaceutical mogul, Miles is your typical attention-seeking spoiled rich kid. In trying to get back in his father’s good graces, he sets out to find the one person his father wants above all else – a young girl with very strange eyes. These two are so interesting together. It’s clear from the start that they couldn’t be more different. Miles was raised with access to all the commodities of the 21st century, and Juneau with a clear understanding of the world beneath. The animosity they felt towards each other and the level of mistrust were expected. No starry eyes for those two! I felt that the progression of their relationship was handled beautifully, with deliberate slowness and tact. When you add to that their hilarious banter, it’s clear why they quickly became one of my favorite couples. This world and these characters have a lot more to give, and while I don’t appreciate or even understand cliffhangers, I was left with just enough hope to tide me over until the next book. That said, hurry up, Ms. Plum! I realize living in Paris can be distracting, but would you please write faster?!

Update 12/25/14 After the End was chosen as one of Badass Book Reviews favorite Young Adult/New Adult SciFi/Dystopia books of 2014. Read all about it here.Initial Thoughts: This was really good, about 4.5 stars with .5 stars deducted for ending too soon, lol. The story is told in alternating first person points of view of the main characters Juneau and Miles. Juneau lives in a small enclave near Denali, Alaska. Miles lives a privileged life in LA. At first, I wondered what the two could possibly have in common. Then they find each other in Seattle and Miles is conscripted to help Juneau find her clan. Oh, and Juneau is very special so the bad guys are chasing them. Wonderfully written, hard to put down. The Review:I can't even begin to imagine how I would react if I found out that my whole life was a sham. Personally, I might just curl up into a ball and just check out. Not Juneau, the 17 year old girl at the center of After the End. Juneau is one plucky heroine. She responds by going on a road trip. Let's take a step back - Juneau has lived an isolated existence with her clan in the Denali Forest. When her home (they lived in yurts!) was attacked and her friends and family were kidnapped by marauders (or what appears to be marauders), Juneau vows to find them. Then she discovers that the world is very different from what she thought. Juneau begins to experience a lot of new things - she's never seen a city before, nor has she ever seen so many people. Despite all of her lack of experience, she is remarkably savvy at surviving and even manages to find her way from Anchorage to Seattle by ferry. Juneau remains one step ahead of her pursuers. The story is told in alternating points of view. We get to see the world through Juneau's eyes and at first I really felt like I was reading a totally different story. All the things that we take for granted in our world are new to Juneau. The second point of view is that of Miles Blackwell, the son of the big pharma company that is pursuing Juneau. Miles lives the life of a privileged rich boy and he keeps getting himself into trouble. He believes that if he helps his father find the missing girl, he will gain favor in his father's eyes. When I first started reading, I couldn't see how these two points of view fit together. It really felt like two different stories and two different worlds. This is a fun story where our main characters learn about themselves and begin to question their upbringing. I did enjoy the road trip and how the two learned to work together. There is a mystical aspect to this book and I am looking forward to reading the next installment to see how that pans out. Thank you to Edelweiss and Harper Teen for a review copy of this book.

After the End is a book that everyone should go into without reading the blurb because it will take you by surprise and consequently, your reading experience will be much more entertaining. That's what I did and having not loved Amy Plum's Revenent series, I was very much surprised by how much I ended up enjoying this title.The book is told in the dual POV of Juneau and Miles. While I did have issues with Miles' POV because of his personality, the dual POV in this book was essential to see the two sides of the story. Juneau was by far my favorite of the two characters. She is someone who is easy to sympathize with. She finds out out of nowhere that her entire life has been a big lie and has to proceed to find her kidnapped clan. Juneau's calmness and maturity when it came to the obstacles that she was facing made her a likeable character, in my opinion. She refused to panic and did what she had to find her loved ones. I also really felt for her. I can't imagine what I would do if I was told that my entire life had been a joke, but Juneau handled everything with a level-head. My reason for not enjoying Miles initially was his motive. I got where he was coming from, but that didn't mean I didn't want to lash out at him every time he even thought of betraying Juneau. It did, however, like that the author had the two main characters mistrust each other for a very long time. Not only was it a refreshing feat in a YA book, but it was also realistic. As a result, the romance was very slow to develop and not a prevalent element.The plot is where I think the book needed a little work in. In all honesty, After the End felt for the most part like a long introduction. The world building was definitely up to par. We learn a lot about Juneau's life with her tribe in Alaska and a little about the mindset of the leader. I also really liked the inclusion of the supernatural element, the Yara, in the book. It was fascinating and by the end of the book, I was still itching to know more. The actual story, however, is just one long car chase with Juneau and Miles trying to escape people who are looking for them. I know this can be a turn off for many readers, but I found myself being thoroughly entertained throughout. I enjoyed the thrill of the chase. It helped that Amy Plum's writing was engrossing and had me hooked throughout. All I wanted to do was to keep reading on and on,so you can imagine the intense disappointment and frustration I felt when the book ended out of nowhere on an awful cliffhanger that made me want to scream.Ultimately, I thought After the End was a captivating book with a memorable heroine, an intriguing world and an engrossing writing style. I'm curious to see where the series is headed to.

UPDATE: AFTER FREADINGOHH MY GOSH! This book was just amazing!!! But that cliffhanger doe...BEFORE READINGOh MY GOSH, OH MY GOSH, OH MY GOSH GUYS!!!!!!!THERE IS GONNA BE ANOTHER AMY PLUM BOOK!THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER!!!!BUT, WOAH... 2014...........NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!I NEED IT NOW!

*4.5 Stars!* I am on fire. A golden statue alight, flames licking around me, melting the snow into puddles at my feet, heating Juneau's face and reddening her nose and cheeks. She leans in closer until her lips are touching mine. And as she kisses me I disperse into a million tiny flames, sparks flying up into the cold winter air and diffusing once they hit the starry night sky. Life, as I've been telling all my lovely GR friends lately, apparently is not a wish granting factory. I've been seeing that a lot lately and I have been in one of those totally depressed, funky moods where yeah, I'm liking books just fine but, I'm not in the best place about it. So when I looked at my Ipad and was trying to decide which dystopian to tackle (that was-and is-what I was in the mood for) I had three or four loaded and ready to go-I narrowed it down to two, and then ultimately chose this one because I've been excited about it the most for the longest time-and I chose correctly. I had a smile on my face the minute that Miles and Juneau met-and it very rarely left my face throughout the entirety of the novel.Life is easier in black and white. It's the ambiguity of a world defined in grays that has stripped me of my confidence and left me powerless.These two are complete polar opposites-you couldn't find a more comical pairing. One lives off the land and is in tune with nature while the other is privileged and pampered and lives in a world where everything has always been handed to him on a silver platter. I loved the dynamics of their relationship and everything in-between. There was no insta-love (GAG) and they were both (knowingly) using each other to get what they needed-it just turns out that they want the exact opposite thing....go figure."The guys who are following you...are they dangerous?" Miles asks finally."Well, normally I would say that Whit wouldn't hurt a flea. But from what Poe here told me-""Poe?" Miles interrupts."The raven," I say."You named the bird?" Miles asks, his voice tinged with a note of hysteria.I think the biggest reason why I loved this book so much is because it wasn't full on dystopian and it didn't try to be. I love this genre, but sometimes authors try way too hard and it doesn't portray quite what they want to. So, when this didn't turn out to be a cut and dry survival story, I was kind of excited. Basically, Juneau left her clan to go hunt for food-they live secluded and 'protected' from the dystopian like world outside their living site from the after effects of World War III....and when Juneau returns, her dad and the whole clan included have disappeared. She knows she must try to find them immediately with her knowledge of the land and way of Kara (not even going to explain-it's not that complicated but I would still mess it up). But when she leaves the confines of her camp and starts to get farther and farther away from what she's always known, she finds out about the biggest betrayal she never would have imagined-there was no WWIII and she has been living a lie. And what's worse, people are after her-maybe even one of the people she's trusted her entire life."Has it shit on my shirt yet?" Miles asks, his nose wrinkling like he doesn't really want to know the answer."Birds don't shit while they're sitting down. They would be sitting in their excrement, and if you haven't noticed-which of course you haven't, you"-I can't think of an insult that fits the bill-"city boy, birds are clean." I don't know why I'm getting all defensive about Poe, but I can't help correcting Mile's glaring misconception."Secondly," Miles continues, ignoring my argument, "a little while ago, you confirmed my long-held belief that birds don't talk. Yet you just said that Poe"-he pauses-"I can't believe I just called it that...this bird told you something.""I shouldn't have said 'told.' I should have said 'showed.'""Because that makes a difference?"Miles lives a life of debauchery and opulence-he repeatedly causes problems in school and has finally been kicked out-a month before graduation. When he hears his father is looking for a girl who is the key to a drug he wants, Miles knows he is more than capable of finding a girl who knows nothing of the city and is virtually a stranger to the world. All he wants is his father's approval and if he can get it by bringing the girl back in for questioning, he will do anything he can to get that accomplished. But what happens when he meets the girl and travels with her on the journey to find her clan? He starts to get to know her and see what kind of person she is. She's as clueless as he is about the whole thing-what if his father is wrong and is after an innocent girl....what will he do then? And even more than that, what will he do when he starts to fall for this crazy girl who eats innocent wildlife and forages in the woods and is the complete opposite of his personality-what if she's exactly what he's been looking for his whole life: a place where he feels like he belongs. What then?The touch of our skin sets off a reaction in me. I am immediately awake...100 percent present. And it feels like a whirlwind of thorns is whipping around in my chest, stinging me all over from the inside. That makes it sound painful. It isn't. It's the kind of itching sensation that makes you want to do something crazy. That spurs you forward to act on an idea you didn't even know was in your head.The dynamic of this story wholly worked for me and there were rarely any parts that bored me. There was information to take in at every twist and turn, but I never felt like I was getting info-dumped. It's hard to find that in stories-that balance where there's just enough cute, sweet, tough, travel, info....peril. It's a delicate process and while I do wish the peril was amped up a bit, I still thought it was wonderfully done and I had hardly a complaint throughout the entire process. It's not like she's wearing a dress. She just has on a pair of black jeans and a red V-neck shirt. But for once they actually fit. Juneau's not skinny, and you wouldn't exactly say muscular. But something in between. She's so much shorter than me that I could easily pick her up. Of course, I refrain since I don't feel like being punched.So, all in all, a total win in my book-it takes a lot to make me completely happy, but this book got as close to perfect as I've seen in a while. When I'm in a foul mood it is quite a process to make me smile, much less laugh, so when ATE succeeded in both, I knew I would be sad to see it end. Speaking of which-that end?? Awesooooommmeeeeeee! I can't wait until book two. For more of my reviews visit

Unique story-line!Fast pacedEasy to connect with characters!All around a great book and can't wait to start the 2nd book in this series!