AFTER - BOOK VS FILM

Okay, so I have been waiting to write this post for quite a while now, as I first picked up this book at the beginning of July. Saying that I have let the thoughts sit with me now and I have taken some time to develop some proper opinions, but we will get into all of that later. Before I get started, I also just wanted to point out, that yes these pictures are quite poor and that is mainly down to silly, amateur Grace using the wrong settings on her camera, so I apologise for that, and some of the other pictures coming in upcoming posts. Anyway, this post is going to be all about After, the book, After, the film and how they compare to each other. 

In case you have no idea what I am talking about, let me give you a summary. Basically, After started out as a Harry Styles fanfiction published on Wattpad, since then, it has had billions of reads and got published into a real book. It then became a New York bestseller, which led to a film adaptation and now the film is out on Netflix. To say the least, this story has been on a wild ride, and since I discovered it went from being a fanfiction to a film, I wanted to know more. 

With the film being released this year, a lot of people have been reading the book, which is now available in physical copy from Amazon, but I got mine from The Works. It has been getting very mixed reviews to say the least, which only intrigued me more because the plot seemed right up my street, yet things were being said that was steering me away from it. However, I finally got around to buying the book, which was humiliating (the woman at the till practically laughed in my face when she saw it), and I read it. I read it in four days, and the following weekend, the film came out. I got around to watching the film, and the keep it brief, I have a lot to say. 

The way I'm going to layout this post is by reviewing the book and film separately, and then going into detail about how they compare, which is probably going to contain spoilers, so please just bear that in mind. 

Starting with the book. To give a brief summary, After follows Tessa's perspective. She is your pretty average girl, a perfectionist, anti-social and has been in a relationship with her childhood best friend since forever, but she is about to start college, alone and is moving out for the first time. When she gets thrown into the college experience, she is around people completely unlike her and that is when she meets Hardin Scott (Harry Styles, if you are reading the version on Wattpad) who is your typical bad bay, rough around the edges, bad attitude with a tormented past. When the two are introduced, they immediately hate each other, but as we all know it, it spirals into a romance unlike anything either has experienced before. I'm pretty proud of that summary and hopefully, I've intrigued some of you. 

I won't lie, it is your typical hate-to-love romance, set at the tender age of 18 when you are exposed to the big bad world. The book is pretty typical in that sense, and you've got to love that sort of romance to enjoy this book. Luckily, I am absolutely trash and love ready books like this. 

What I liked so much about this plot though was that there was always something mysterious or something intense happening. The book was never stagnant which is what a lot of my recent reads have been, so this was super refreshing to pick up. Tessa and Hardin's relationship is obviously the main driving force in this book and they take so many twists and turns that you are just always intrigued to read about what will come next. I will mention now though, as their relationship develops, it is very much a toxic state and mentality that the two of them have. Although the book glorifies an obsessive, toxic relationship to some extent, I think as long as you recognise this and acknowledge it, I don't see what's wrong with it as its purpose is to entertain at the end of the day. The book is also extremely unrealistic in every sense of the plot but yet again, its entertaining so just bear that in mind if you are vulnerable or naive to these kinds of books. Apart from that, I do love the characters and relationships in this book. Personally, I find Tessa a little bit annoying as a lot of her reactions are very dramatic and her internal thoughts tend to spiral in the most ridiculous ways, saying that, I think Hardin as a character is well developed, contains a lot of depth and generally carries the book due to his mysterious nature. As for their relationship, like I said, it is toxic at times, but there are also a lot of really tender moments in there as well as some fun banter which I really love because as a reader, you laugh at those moments, which I just think is rare to find sometimes. With this plot and relationship, there is a lot of sexual scenes in the book and the writing goes into depth in those scenes, which is understandably not to everyone's taste. I won't lie, some of the sex scenes made me cringe loads because other descriptions were blunt while attempting to be sexy, they just didn't work for me. They do make a regular occurrence in the book though so again, just bear that in mind if you want to read it. I didn't find them unreadable or drastically bad, but some of them are a little awkward to read, especially in terms of the speech, but it is something most people can just bare with. Something refreshing about the book though was that Tessa, who is the one with no sexual experience actually controls how her sexual relationship with Hardin. She says no and she takes control in some aspects, which I think is important to show in a book like this. 

As for other relationships and characters I love in this book, Tessa's relationship with Landon (Liam on Wattpad) is probably my next favourite. They are super like-minded and he is the sort of friend that could do no wrong. Landon is honest but loyal, he is giving and thoughtful, just a great guy. Although that is one of the only positive relationships in the book, there are some characters that you've just got to admire. I love characters like Steph, Zayn and Molly who are all apart of the highly dysfunctional friendship group that Tessa gets thrown into but you learn to see the good and bad in all of them as time goes on. I also think that the friendship banter is amazing in the book whether it includes Hardin or Tessa. 

I don't want to go much more into the plot, but it has a lot of your typical learning curves in it. Making friends, learning to trust people, first loves, family problems, it covers them all. I will say though, the ending will flip everything backwards for you. The physical book ends differently tp the Wattpad book but the ending of the physical copy is the second chapter in the Wattpad book two in case you want to grasp where I'm up to. Anyway, that plot twist is massive and definitely added a lot to the book. There is definitely a few hints a lot the wat but I didn't see it coming as it was pretty unimaginable until you see it on paper. It will make you to angry though so just be prepared to scream in frustration because that was me too. 

Another thing about the book that I wanted to point out, is that the writing is very basic and at times, poorly written. Even the published book contains spelling mistakes and grammatical errors which I thought was a bit ridiculous but it's something you've just got to look past, and luckily, I found that they didn't happen too often. Saying that some things could have been written better but overall, it is super easy to read and descriptive. Like I said earlier,  I read this super quickly because although it is 99 chapters long and over 500 pages, you fly through it because the writing is that easy to follow. 

As for right now, I gave this book 4/5 just because it was really entertaining, I really enjoyed the plot and characters, and although it was super predictable and typical at times, I like that in books so all was good in my eyes. I didn't give it a 5 just because of some of the scenes that were cringey, poorly written or too dramatic for my liking. Overall though, I would probably read it again. 

This book also became a series very quickly and although I am still yet to buy the series in physical copies, I have started to read books two and three on Wattpad. Maybe I'll save those to be reviewed for another day, but I am currently on book three and I am still enjoying it. 

I would recommend this to anyone who just wants something quick and easy to read that is a typical hate-to-love romance, coming of age story. It is definitely a guilty pleasure but just enjoy it. 

This post is now going to take a bit of a turn now because I am going to go onto the film and how it compares with the book. The film has the same plot basically but there were some major changes they made in the film when you go back and compare it to the book, all that I will come to in a minute. Firstly though, I wanted to talk about casting. 

When reading the book, I had quite a vivid image of everything from Tessa and Hardin to the campus and the Vance Publishing but everything looked perfect in the book I thought. Especially, Hardin and Tessa, they were cast perfectly, looking over the fact that Tessa was supposed to be blonde and curvy, they both had the right look and their chemistry was great in the film. I also like how they manipulated some of the smaller characters, so instead of Steph and her boyfriend, Tristan in the book, in the film, Tristan was a girl so I love how they included a lesbian romance into the film. Landon is also black in the film, whereas in the book, he was supposed to fit the appearance of Liam Payne, but I think the film did a good job at including a little more diversity although I don't think it was really enough considering that Tessa was described to be super curvy in the book but isn't in the film, which I thought was a little frustrating. 

As you might be able to gather, I wasn't a big fan of the film but I'm going to get into why now. My main issue with the film was that there was no substance to any of it. Every single scene ended too soon and nothing was established whether that be a personality trait or a relationship, you just don't see anything happen in the scenes. It is because of this, that you build no connection to any of the characters or the relationships each of them, you feel no sympathy for anyone and everything just feels distant. With this, the whole film feels rushed. Without giving to much away, Tessa and Hardin go from sharing their first kiss to moving in together within the space of about 20 minutes and quite frankly, I thought it was a bit of a joke. Like I said earlier, Tessa and Hardin's relationship is what drives the book but that definitely wasn't the case in the film, I found there to be nothing romantic or endearing about their relationship, it seemed fake, awkward and quite honestly, boring. All of the characters really had their own personality in the book, but none of that is shown in the film, Steph is suppose to be witty and caring, Zed is suppose to be charming and hilarious, but none of this is reflected in the scenes of the film, it was frustrating to watch. 

The other main thing that really bothered me about the film was the lack of communication throughout. There is weirdly too much silence in the film, it doesn't add anything to the film, instead, it makes it just feel more awkward. There is not a lot of speech in it and I think that's why I felt like the scenes had no substance to it, because they weren't talking for the majority of it. You get Hardin taking really long pauses to say something and I get that their intention was to make it sexy and seductive but it just doesn't feel like that when you watch it. If you've watched the film then please let me know if you agree because I don't know whether it's just me. 

In terms of how similar it is to the book, they feel quite different. The basis of the plot is the same, but it was the little things in the book that made me really love the story and the film just didn't carry that through, instead, they added other scenes which made no sense to me and like I said before, they had no substance to them. From the perspective of someone who liked the plot of the book and the little scenes and sub-plots in it, the film just felt completely different, there were so many changes and additions, things happened in a different order, and to be quite honest, what happens in the book is better than what happens in the film. The film also misses out so many important scenes from the book that really build on the relationships and characters. I don't want to go into all of the scenes I think that they should have included, but because they were missed out, I just felt like the relationship between Hardin and Tessa was rushed and faked as what you see through the film is not enough to be classed as a love story. 

My final complaint is the ending. Like I said the physical book and the Wattpad book end differently and the film ends similarly to the physical book, but the big plot twist at the end is different. Not dramatically different, but I think the plot reveal in the film is ridiculous and the reactions are incredibly dramatic and unnecessary in comparison to the book. The plot reveal in the book is massive, it makes you question a lot and although it is disgusting what happens, it makes for a good plot twist, but I think the film failed to capture that same effect. The recovery of this plot twist is also too quick in the film, there isn't any separation or reflection, like the book and like I keep saying, it was all just a bit rushed. The very end of the film is similar to some things that happen in the second book but it is nowhere near as romantic, as meaningful or as sensible, in the film, it just didn't make any sense to me. If you do accept the ending of the film though, there is still a lot left to question which I guess is why they tried to leave it on a bit of a cliffhanger. 

I apologise for making this post so long, but hopefully, you can see that I had a lot to let off my chest. I'm hoping I haven't completely ruined your plans on reading the book or watching the film, don't forget, these are just my opinions, and I would love to know your thoughts if you have read/watched After, we could have a little discussion!

Grace xx