Early Review: After the Snow by S.D. Crockett (ARC)

Book: After the Snow by S.D. Crockett
Release Date: 27 Mar 2012
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Genre: Young Adult, Post Apocalyptic
Summary: Fifteen-year-old Willo was out hunting when the trucks came and took his family away. Left alone in the snow, Willo becomes determined to find and rescue his family, and he knows just who to talk with to learn where they are. He plans to head across the mountains and make Farmer Geraint tell him where his family has gone.
But on the way across the mountain, he finds Mary, a refugee from the city, whose father is lost and who is starving to death. The smart thing to do would be to leave her alone -- he doesn't have enough supplies for two or the time to take care of a girl -- but Willo just can't do it. However, with the world trapped in an ice age, the odds of them surviving on their own are not good. And even if he does manage to keep Mary safe, what about finding his family?
Buy It: Hardcover or Kindle eBook
Source: Please note that I received this book for free from the publisher for the purpose of an honest review. I did not receive monetary compensation for my review and receiving this book in no way affected my opinion or how it was expressed in my review.


Review: Aint liking way book been written. Willo's 'voice' took me a very long time to acclimate too and I'm honestly not sure I ever truly fell into the book like I feel like this writing style intended. I found myself constantly rereading things because I didn't understand what was trying to be said. I'm really torn on this; I can appreciate Crockett's choice to write the way Willo thinks and speaks because it feels more authentic, but I didn't enjoy it. It's like how people see movies that were nominated for Oscars and think 'yeah, these are amazingly well done' but no one enjoys them.

I think this book will be hugely popular for the right niche. I can't stand the books selected for Oprah’s Book Club, but tons and tons of people obviously do. After the Snow would actually fit nicely as one of those books. I guess a better way to describe it is by comparing After the Snow to five star restaurant food; it's exotic, rich, probably amazing to people with refined taste. However, I'm an unidentifiable meat kind of girl; give me a bologna and cheese sandwich and I'm happy. After the Snow has literary merit and will probably win some crazy awards but I just didn't enjoy it. It wasn't fun for me to read. After the Snow reminded me a lot of Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, which I found to be an powerful read but didn't enjoy a single moment of.

Willo and I had a love/hate relationship going. Most of the time I couldn't connect with his character at all. Willo struggled with emotion, big time. He couldn't identify what he was feeling and often times decided that it didn't matter or that he felt nothing. This was a problem for me when he mentions his 14 year old sister having a child with a creepy old man and when he stumbles upon two starving children who have someone he believes to be their father dead in the shed. I liked seeing him eventually struggle with both of those issues but because he originally didn't care, I found myself hating him. Willo also wears a dog skull on his head and the dog 'talks' to him. Most of the time I found this disturbing but a few times the dog ended up being my favorite 'character'. Willo is also incredibly bloodthirsty and not just for revenge against Geraint and the government. Willo constantly talks about his knife, killing animals and how much he wants a gun so that he can kill more. This is obviously a trait due to circumstance but it still upset me as someone who goes out of their way to help any and all animals.

The third and final part of the book almost made up for the first two. It was intense and interesting. Full of deception, betrayal and action. It broke my heart too. I knew the book would depress me after reading the very first chapter but I still had a smidgen of hope. I won't say anything more because there's plenty of different things I could be sad about and I don't want to spoil the book but I do want to say that the depressing, ominous feeling you get at the beginning of the book stays with you and you aren't wrong. You're right, horribly right.

Rating: 1½ Bites (Just okay -- Simply not for me)