Afterward by Bristol Vaudrin
Thank you for joining me this week for Book Beginnings on Fridays where participants share the opening sentence (or two) from the book they are reading. You can also share from a book you want to feature, even if you are not reading it at the moment.
MY BOOK BEGINNING
Afterward, I broke open. I cried.
-- from Afterward by Bristol Vaudrin.
Afterward is a new novel that explores the aftermath of tragedy. The exact tragedy is not revealed until the end, so we watch the protagonist deal with what happened and her boyfriend's subsequent hospitalization without really knowing just what happened.
I admit, the cover gives offputting Charlie Kirk vibes. But Afterward gets nothing but 5-star reviews on amazon and is generating a lot of buzz. I was happy to accept a review copy and look forward to reading it.
Read more about Afterward in the publisher's description, below, and on Bristol Vaudrin's website.
YOUR BOOK BEGINNING
Please add the link to your book beginning post in the linky box below. If you participate or share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings so other people can find your post.
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She was shocked at my news about Kyle."Oh, honey, that's just awful! When did it happen?
Torn from her normal routines-coffee, sex, barhopping, and disc golf--she finds herself in an unfamiliar world of hospital visits and doctor's appointments, all while navigating an unexpected move to a new apartment and enduring the disapproval of her boyfriend's mother, as well as the gossip of her friends and coworkers. (Plus the suspicious looks of strangers, and the unbearable strain on her credit card...and did we mention the gossip of her friends and coworkers?) Along the way, she meets every obstacle with...well, not grace, exactly. In fact, pretty much the opposite of grace. Maybe more like bitchiness, truth be told. And all the while, the aftereffects of the tragedy cast a pall over everything she does--and threaten to destroy everything she has.
Bristol Vaudrin's fascinating debut novel is an engrossing and darkly comedic read with an unforgettable narrator/protagonist. Watching her struggles--real, imagined, and in-between--we too must choose between kindness and judgment, between condescension towards someone who simply doesn't have a clue, and empathy with a person struggling to deal with something we all must face: the desire to hold on to the things we enjoy when the world around us changes in ways we didn't expect.
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