Rating: 4 stars out of 5:
Award-winning teen poet Carter Rogers has made a lot of bad choices in her life, one of which led to losing her hand to frostbite. After a failed suicide attempt, Carter wakes up and takes a hard look at the person she’s become. As her disappointment over her botched effort fades, she begins to accept herself and look forward. Righting past wrongs won’t be easy, but armed with the support of her mother and her friends, and with a new perspective on life, Carter sets out to fix her relationships with the people she cares about and the world of poetry.
This book definitely deals with some sensitive topics, and it’s always hard to toe the line between writing about a sensitive topic and making it realistic to the characters without simply using what happens for shock value. I think this book does that very well. I always felt like all the characters, and Carter in particular, were very real, and none of them seemed to simply be going through something for the sake of the book or so that their problems could be nothing more than a plot device. They all had a lot of depth, and that’s what make the book interesting and enjoyable for me to read.
The author of this book has a very interesting style, and even within the first few pages and certainly the first few chapters you can really tell that the book is written in a different and fresh style that you wouldn’t see in many other books. There were times when, if you weren’t paying close enough attention, because there were a few jumps as far as the time went, it could be a little bit confusing. There were definitely sections where after I got a paragraph or so in, I had to go back because I was a little confused, but over all it was nice to see a different writing style.
After I Wake by Emma Griffiths was definitely a book that I really enjoyed reading and one that I feel can definitely relate to the lives of a lot of teenagers, and LGBT teenagers especially, right now.
Bree Archer is the cover artist. I really like this cover, despite the fact that photo-based covers are not always my favorites. Because the cover of this book is so simplistic, it looks a lot nicer and less generic than some covers I’ve seen that include real photos. It’s also just a really beautiful cover, and I like it a lot. It’s also very fitting as far as the tone of the book goes, in my opinion.
Sales Links: Harmony Ink/DSP – All Romance (ARe) – Amazon 
Book Details:
ebook, 180 pages, also in paperback
Published May 14th 2015 by Harmony Ink Press (first published May 14th 2005)
original titleAfter I Wake
ISBN139781634760317
edition languageEnglish
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 
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