After

After, by Amy Efaw, is the story of Devon Davenport, a fifteen-year-old girl who has a baby and leaves it to die in the dumpster behind her apartment complex. A couple of hours later, she has already been arrested and is headed to Remann Hall Juvenile Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington. The book shows her first eight days at Remann Hall and her declination hearing, which will determine whether she will remain in the juvenile system or be tried as an adult.

What I liked: The subject of the book is compelling and it seems to be very well-researched. I also like the character of Karma; in fact, I like her so much that at several points during the book I wished I was reading a novel about her instead.

What I didn't like: Like many newer books, After is in present tense for no practical reason. This made it hard to forget that I was reading a book, and led to distracting tense change mistakes such as on page 334: "Dr. Bacon was on the stand for over an hour, answering both Dom's and Mr. Floyd's intricate questions. When she stepped down, Judge Saynisch asked for the probation officer's risk assessment. The woman sitting over on the far side of the room stands up and carries a thick file over to one of the women at the base of the judge's bench." The novel was also full of typos. I understand that nearly every book is bound to have a typo, but this one had many.

The characters in this book are unrealistic and often annoying. Devon's mother in particular read like a caricature. There were parts where I didn't know if I was supposed to be laughing at how she was acting, or if the author thought that she was portraying something resembling real life. Another character, Henrietta, says "okay" every other word. It's supposed to be a realistic quirk, but it's annoying and she uses the word in places that are incredibly unnatural. It was so irritating that, despite her likeable personality, I hated her. Even the one character I really liked, Karma, didn't seem like she could ever be a real person.

Efaw tells us repeatedly that Devon is a straight-A student, and she is placed in a special study period for the advanced students of Remann Hall. However, despite the author's insistence that Devon is a smart kid, her thoughts and actions in the book consistently betray her stupidity.

Devon's denial comes off as a device to make her sympathetic rather than a real explanation of her actions. The way she so quickly remembers and acknowledges events that she had lived in denial of for the better part of a year isn't convincing, and the flashbacks that show those memories to the reader are intrusive and potentially confusing as they are often unannounced.

Every event in Devon's life is a soccer analogy. It started to annoy me around page 175. Even her lawyer, Dom, starts using them at some point. Assuming Efaw's editor already cut some from the book, half of this thing must have been soccer analogies at one point.

After is boring throughout, with long, unnecessary descriptions of rooms, objects and actions and dull writing. The chapter endings are neither intriguing nor memorable. Chapters 3 and 22 even end with the same line: "And Devon starts to cry." (pages 43 and 327)

Overall: I don't even think this book is worth checking out from the library. There is almost nothing good about it. It's long, boring and badly-written.

(Slight spoilish)

Amy Efaw takes on a whether difficult and complex issue of abandoned newborn children in this dark, legal read in 'After'. I'll be honest, I had high hopes for this book it and felt let me down, so I have to complain.

The writing was too draw out into getting to the initial course into Devon's motives and reasoning into "that night". If you ask me, "that night" the shock and surprise she felt, was more in my eyes the fear of dealing with her consequences, present to the possible future. It was also whether hard for me sympathize with the Devon character throughout most of the book because she appeared selfish at times and felt the need to blame her mother for her miserable life. Ok, this kid was a A+ student, sport's star destined to play for a D-1 college soccer someday, and well liked by many... but her life still suck? You know how many teens wished they had it that good just for themselves and keep their parents satisfied. Granted, Devon's mother Jennifer is a tad flirtatious and a few non-successful relationships, but she did the best she could to raise Devon even neglecting her own family just to make a life for the two of them. So to me, Devon's punishment at her mother was not justified at all. Also I was whether disappointed in Devon's lack of communication and awareness throughout most of the book, that became tiresome and frustrating. I don't know if Efaw was trying to hint at mental illness for Devon, but if you are going to go there -- do so or don't at all.

However, while most of the book was a bit of a drag and has its flaws, the last hundred pages saved the day primarily as it surround Devon's fate in her hearing. Devon does get back into my good graces once the book ends.

To conclude, I found it to be a respectable read and brave attempt, but it whether slow and drug out much too long for my liking. It does beg the question: Do you buy into Devon's denial-pregnancy or not? For me, I couldn't. Because WHAT IF the baby took a tragic fate after all? Efaw does a good job with her research but her execution through most of the book was not that effective.

Right off the bat I'm just going to tell you that not everyone that reads this book is going to actually get it. The ending specifically could be hard to understand for some. If you have read this book already I'm sure you know what I'm talking about; and if you haven't but want to read this book, you should know that you take something away from it whether or not you fully grasp the meaning.

When you read the summery of this book you are one or both of two things: disgusted, intrigued. Reading the summery you may think there is no way that you could ever sympathize with a person who leaves her baby in the trash to die. But the simple truth? It's not really about sympathizing, it's about understanding.

I have heard about things like this happening on the news, in the papers. My first instinct has always been to be disgusted, but it doesn't do anyone any good to be disgusted. It is far better to have some sort of understanding of a situation first before forming an opinion. So in that way I found this book very important, because it answered many of my questions about what a woman could be thinking in order for her to do such an unthinkable thing.

Devon is a girl who I came to understand throughout the story, she was scared and lonely and confused and the entire time she's pregnant she's hiding it from herself, and not letting herself see that she is.

In this book you get to go into Devon's mind, you get to learn about her relationships with other people. And ultimately you get an understanding. In the end it's Devon accepting what she's done and taking responsibility. There is not a happy ending, but there is a right one.

This book isn't about Devon reconciling with her baby, or her mother or anyone else in her life. It's simply about Devon and what she goes thru after everything crumbles down around her and the truth is revealed.

This is a very emotional read, it's realistic and scary. But most importantly it's thought provoking about a subject that many people would be happier ignoring. Even if you don't like this story, or don't fully grasp the meaning, you will still take something away from it; and that something is very important.

I recently spoke with Amy Efaw about her book on goodreads and she told me she is working on writing more about Devon and what happens after After. I for one will be thrilled to read more about the characters and see the relationships in Devon's life develop further.

If your like me, you hesitated to pick this book up. But I'm telling you right now that whether you like the story or not, you won't regret reading it.

My daughter was losing focus with soccer and academics. She was still doing okay, but she was starting to think more about dating and parties. Obviously, I read the book first to be sure it was appropriate. The book was very good. It got her to thinking about how one moment in time can ruin their life.

After by Amy Efaw is a disturbing story which deals with the phenomenon of “dumpster babies”. It has the feel of an uneven musical composition. Sometimes the style turned me off. Other times, the character portrayal felt wrong. And, once in a while, the plot felt overloaded. Yet within the bulk of its pages is a story that I enjoyed.

I’ll get back to the parts I enjoyed later, but first let me address the style. The first several chapters with their rapid-fire sentences felt like the incessant tap-tap-tap of a staccato beat. Interspersed within those chapters were occasional scenes of frenzy, as if the composer were stumbling over notes in a panicked attempt to find the right rhythm. However, just when I felt ready to walk away, the melody evened out. From that moment forward, despite the occasional wrong note, the composition was pleasant. Basically, I didn’t care for the early scenes in which Devon just laid at home in her blood, police arrested her for dumping a newborn, or a doctor examined her. Once Efaw placed Devon in a juvenile detention center and forced her to deal with the charges against her, the story finally began to interest me. This is also where the pace slowed and Efaw began to reveal more of Devon’s deeper emotions.

Efaw picked a challenging character in Devon Davenport. On the one hand, Devon is a teenage girl who vowed to never become her mom. She intended to first attend college and to establish a career. Then and only then would she allow herself to date, get married, have sex, and become a mom. But then Devon has a vulnerable moment. Allows herself to fall in love. And have sex. On the other hand, Devon is a young woman who denies even to herself that she has gotten pregnant and has given birth to a baby, and so she dumps her child. No matter how one frames it, Devon will be a tough character to understand. To provide distance from Devon, who starts off in huge denial, Efaw decided to write After in third person. I understand why Efaw made this choice, but it still feels like a mistake. For the first third of the book I basically hated Devon. Perhaps the young ladies whom Efaw observed as part of her research acted as arrogant and self-centered as Devon, and so maybe After is an accurate portrayal of teens who dump their babies, but as fiction After also needs to readers a reason to read the page. I almost didn’t.

One reason I kept reading is because After had been recommended to me as part of my round-up on misfit and troubled kids. Devon Davenport certainly fits the bill. She resists arrest. She kicks a doctor in the face. She argues with the attorney assigned her case. Only when Devon realizes that she could be tried for murder as an adult does she stop fighting everyone and start to accept that she might need help. At that point, the tough exterior wanes and Devon starts to look a little more like the frightened sixteen-year-old that she is. At the book’s website, Efaw says that one thing she hopes readers will take away from After is the importance of getting involved in other people’s lives. This is especially true of troubled kids. Efaw also encourages ones to not be afraid to ask for help, which is something that troubled kids often find especially difficult.

When Devon finally started showing herself as vulnerable, After became extremely moving and Efaw gave me many reasons to feel sympathy. She works hard to become a model prisoner. She builds new relationships. And she begins to search her soul for the truth of who she really is and wants to be.

I try to be fair to every book I read and I did actually finish this novel, I truly think I deserve a medal for that, but this was just torture. The main character is extremely unlikable and unrelatable which is simply depressing because the topic and even the explanation for her actions are extremely interesting. Honestly, the best thing to do with this book is to read a synopsis and have a philosophical debate with yourself about the implications.

I will do my part to help you achieve this. The story follows a 15 year old girl with an extremely immature mother who dates many men after getting pregnant at the age of 16. She is a perfect student, quiet, intelligent, driven and too hard on herself. She defines herself in opposition to her mother which has made her extremely opposed to the idea of sex. So when she has unprotected sex she is in extreme denial of the fact and continues to deny her pregnancy until the night that she gives birth. Where she then panics, puts her baby in a dumpster and almost bleeds to death. The baby does survive, its a girl and her name is Anastasia.

In conclusion, don't read this novel unless you simply want to prove to yourself how terrible it is. Read my synopsis and consider the implications of her life, how she defines herself and the severity of her crime as well as how the baby surviving works into it. That thought experiment is much more worthwhile than reading this book.

I think Amy Efaw did a great job at using details in her book After. She really gave a clear picture about everything that was going on in the story, making it easier to understand. However, even with her very good details, I still found the book a little confusing at times. For example in the beginning when the police yanked the blanket off of Devon and saw the blood, I wasn't really sure how she got so bloody. Later on in the book it made it clear, but I felt a little lost not knowing how she got like that. Efaw also put some very disturbing pictures in my head from her good details. I found it hard to read at certain times, especially when Devon was in the courtroom and witnesses were giving their view on the situation. One witness started to talk about how he found the baby in the trashcan, bloody from recent childbirth, and how the baby was purple from being so cold in the trashcan bag. It was also difficult to read at the end that one baby is abandoned in a trashcan everyday by their mother. If I were in Devon's shoes and had a baby I couldn't take care of, I probably would have given it to foster parents, or someone that could take care of the child.

This is a very good book. I really enjoyed Amy Efaw's earlier book, which was why I ordered AFTER. But as a pediatric specialist, the subject was too sad and depressing for me to voluntarily choose to read this type of fiction, so I finished it so I could read something by Brad Thor, or Brian Haig . Strong work Amy Efaw.

This si a really good read.

After by Amy Efaw is a well-researched examination of teen pregnancy and what's known as the "dumpster baby" phenomenon.

As an undergraduate considering a career as a social worker, I participated in field experiences in both a group home and juvenile detention facility. The book provides an accurate portrayal of these facilities and the mix of professionals and juveniles in the system.

Efaw's characters are well-developed. Although it was difficult to empathize with some of Devin's actions, I cared about her character. At first, I had a hard time believing that Devin didn't realize she was pregnant. However as the story unfolded, I was drawn into the reasons for her denial. I wanted to shake, hug, and yell at her.

While realistic fiction isn't my first choice of leisure reading, I found this book to be a quick, interesting read. Because of the timely topic, it would be a great way to draw in readers to this genre.