After | RANT REVIEW

hey everyone it's dario welcome back to my channel full of lit and today i'm going to be telling you guys all of my feelings and opinions on after by anna todd and according to the cover this book is a wattpad sensation with 1 billion reads online newly revised and expanded i mean i don't know if revised is the right word that should be used in this situation but we'll get to that later so just a quick disclaimer before i get started i am not trying to offend anybody or hurt anybody's feelings with this review if you enjoyed after if after is your favorite book that's totally fine we can have different opinions you probably don't want to watch this video but let's just all be civil and get started with the review so i first heard about this book's existence from laura over at lovely like laura i'm a huge fan of hers i always watch her videos and she kept talking about this book after laura was filming a bunch of update videos for her subscribers about after and the movie that is being made based on this book so i started doing a little bit of my own research on this book and the movie that was being made i started following the author on twitter and instagram i was liking some of the photos because it looked promising the actors who were playing in this film look like they have a lot of potential and because i'm a reader i wanted to check out the original material first before considering watching the movie so i buy the book get it on my kindle i start reading and not even halfway through i quickly realized that this was possibly the worst book that i've read in my entire life so apparently after started its life as a harry styles fanfic now don't get me wrong i have nothing against fan fiction okay i've written it i've read it there are some fanfics out there that are absolute masterpieces and are better than some published books that i've read but this book is just so bad okay it doesn't matter if it's fanfic or if it's regular fiction it's just bad so after follows a college freshman named tessa young she is your stereotypical good girl she doesn't go to parties she doesn't drink she gets straight a's and she wears these button-up shirts to pretty much cut off all her circulation so tessa goes to college and she meets this guy named hardin originally harry in the fanfic and hardin is the bad boy punk dude he has tons of tattoos and piercings and what can i say about hardin other than the fact that he is an this dude doesn't have a personality okay and neither of them do the entire point of a romance novel is to make the reader root for the two main characters both individually and as a couple you're supposed to want them to be together and anatod failed on both those accounts because i genuinely did not give a about either of these people or whether they were together or not i felt like this book kept trying to manufacture angst intention that just wasn't there and didn't make sense i was halfway through this book and these two had gotten back together and broken up at least 18 times even if you liked and shipped these two together which i did not at all but even if you did how do you not get pissed off and annoyed at the fact that these two seem to break up and make up like every five pages this is how the plot pretty much went hardened and tessa would talk to one another they would kind of get into an argument and then like two seconds later in the next scene they would make out or do something sexual or they would talk or have some kind of conversation and tessa would think to herself oh maybe harden isn't so bad i have really strong feelings for him i think i might be in love with him and then another few scenes later they would get into another argument and tessa would say you know what i'm done with hardin i can't believe i ever thought i could have feelings with him how could i let him have my body blah blah and then uh yeah just like rinse and repeat 82 times and that's the plot of this book let's take a look at both of these characters individually shall we tessa she is the most judgmental holier-than-thou person i've ever read about in any novel my main issue with tessa is that she had so much internalized misogyny and hatred for other girls totally unnecessarily i kid you not every single female character she met in this book she hated or judged them so i'll give you guys some examples alright so tessa at this part is moving into her dorm for the first time she just met her new roommate stephanie or steph and steph being a nice person tells tessa hey there's this party i'm going with my friends why don't you come with us so then steph tells tessa you can help me pick my outfit she says and then this is what tessa thinks the dresses she picks out are so inappropriate that i keep looking around for a hidden camera and someone to jump out and tell me this is all a joke i cringe at each one this stranger is being nice to you for no reason to be honest because tessa had been judging her the minute she stepped through the door and now you're gonna openly cringe and judge this girl because of what she wears so then there's this character named molly whose only reason for existing in this book is to just make tessa jealous try to get with hardin and just make tessa look like a better character by comparison like molly's this bad girl she's promiscuous she's we're not supposed to like her and oh my god look at tessa and by comparison tess is so sweet jess is so pure of course harden's gonna want tessa like just off so molly shows up in the novel and she's wearing a tank top and a leather skirt and this is what our lovely tessa has to say about that it's only tuesday and she's already almost used up her skate quota for the week we love feminism and girl power so about 20 pages later they're all sitting together playing truth or dare at a party or something molly is sitting on hardin's lap and this is what tesla thinks about that molly is still perched on his lap like the she is oh my gosh what the so according to tessa it is perfectly okay for her to make out with harden while she is a boyfriend and then lie about it and continue cheating but god forbid that someone else sits on hardin's lap because then she's a but you guys don't even worry about it in case you were worried tessa's shaming and judgment is not just reserved for kind roommates who invite her out to places or girls who sit on the lap of the guy that she likes no no no no tesla shaming and judgment is also for complete strangers people she doesn't even know the first name of so harden shows up to this bonfire with a random girl that tessa doesn't even know and you know what you guys we love a self-aware queen because this is what tessa has to say i know i am being rude by not introducing myself to this girl but i can't help but dislike her already and then a few lines later when the girl simply asks do they have food here tessa says that her voice is annoying be warned ladies if you stand within five feet of hardened scot tessa will automatically think that you are annoying and will dislike you because that's not internalized misogyny and that's a great role model to have for young girls besides the slut-shaming and the constant judgment of other people the other thing that really got on my nerves about tessa and this probably doesn't really have to do with her as a character it probably has more to do with the writing and the author is that inside of tessa's head she would constantly say oh i don't usually do this thing i don't usually drink i don't usually go to parties i'm not this type of person and then not even two pages later she would do exactly that thing so i'll give you guys an example at the start of the novel hardin and tessa don't know each other hardin is in her dorm room because he's friends with steph and this is what tessa says i don't usually like conflict and this boy harden seems like the last person i should start a fight with and i you not you guys on the next page two paragraphs later tessa says your boyfriend is rude the words tumble out before i can stop them i just don't understand how you can say that you don't like conflict and then two seconds later try to start an argument with this guy and insult him and it's not just this one moment there's so many examples throughout the book where tesla will say something like oh i don't usually go to parties and get drunk and then she does exactly that oh i'm uncomfortable with you know getting naked in front of somebody and then she takes off her clothes and goes into a lake to swim with harding like it just doesn't make sense and it makes her character seem so wishy-washy and underdeveloped and flat so tessa is the stereotypical good girl so she's really into studying she's really into academics which is not an issue in and of itself i like to study i like school but the problem came when there were these constant descriptions of her writing in her planner planning out her day where she had to be at what time and there were also all these descriptions of her just getting ready putting on clothes and doing your hair like i literally i don't care i don't care if you wear the red shirt or the blue shirt or you braid your hair or you put it up in a ponytail like that's not interesting to me why was there so much time wasted describing these things i don't know i don't know maybe it's not a big deal to other people but it annoyed the hell out of me the entire time i was reading this book another thing that annoyed me let's be honest so many things annoyed me when it comes to this book but another thing is that the word assault was constantly used during consensual acts of intimacy which doesn't make sense at all so in the e-book you can actually search for words and so i'm going to type in the word assault and look how many options came up what the actual and so many times it's used in consensual situations like this for example so hardin and tessa are making out and it says his mouth continues its gentle assault just let that sink in okay gentle assault could you think of two words in the english language that are more juxtaposed and then it happens again it says his gentle assault like a hundred pages later when they're having sex like why why i don't get it there are so many words in the english language why do you have to use those two to describe a consensual activity and then again later in the novel i'm not kidding you guys it's used so many times it says hardin continues his beautifully slow assault not only is it completely inaccurate it's just cringy like it's so cringy and it makes me so uncomfortable authors everywhere please stop using assault when you're describing a consensual activity between two people stop and speaking of assault let's not forget the attempted sexual assault scene that appears in this book and appears in pretty much every single new adult in romance book like i know that sounds shitty to say but let's be honest it's pretty much a staple of those genres so tessa is at a party at a fraternity and she goes into a room to fall asleep with her friend steph and then this random drunk guy shows up and tries to assault her and she runs out of the room she knocks on harden's door because he lives in that fraternity and he lets her in and he asks her did he touch you and she says no he tried though i was stupid enough to lock myself in a room with a drunk stranger so i suppose it's my fault the idea of that creep touching me makes me want to cry again it's not your fault that's what hardin says that he did that you aren't used to this type of situation so this scene is just so gross for so many different reasons but there's two main ones that i want to touch upon the first thing is that scenes like this only exist to make the hero seem like a better person basically harden saves her kind of from this shitty awful situation and then now suddenly we as the reader are supposed to be okay with them getting together and just like no offense but i'm pretty sure it's basic human decency to help someone if they are in a dangerous situation like i'm not gonna suddenly think the sun shines out of your ass because you help a girl who's in a situation of almost being assaulted secondly this scene also exists to somehow create intimacy between the hero and the heroine between hardin and tessa and that is just so disgusting on the next page hardin and tessa kiss for the first time and then they make out it doesn't make any sense to me and it's just so gross like who in their right mind is going to want to make out with somebody and or have sex with them right after they've almost been violated and been in that kind of traumatic situation nobody is going to want to do that nobody and yet in new adult books like this it seems to be some kind of aphrodisiac the main thing that makes this scene so gross and problematic is that no thought is given whatsoever to tessa and how she might be feeling if you're going to write an assault scene or an almost assault scene like this one you have to talk about how the survivor and victim might be feeling you can't just gloss over this and move on to a makeout session that's not how this should be handled this is an incredibly sensitive and important subject and you can't just move on from it okay you have to show the ramifications of what happened and that doesn't happen in this book harden and tessa never speak about what happened to her they'd never talk about it again and there's no consequences for the guy who tried to hurt her he's never even brought up again and it becomes so glaringly obvious that the only reason that the scene is even included is to somehow get tessa into harden's room so they can make out and make harden seem like a hero and that's just awful like this book does not know how to address assault at all like it's always just glossed over like it's no big deal there's one part in the book which i will show to you guys because i could not believe what the hell i was reading when i saw it there's this scene where harden tessa and a bunch of their group of friends are together at a party of course they're at a party why are there so many parties in this book anyway they're all at a party they're playing truth or dare and then tessa and this guy zed who is another guy in the group he kind of has a crush on her they get dared to go upstairs and do like a seven minutes of heaven-esque type thing so zed and tessa go upstairs tessa is drunk off her ass and she tells him oh so what do you want to do and he says let's just talk yeah he says and i nod and look down at the floor not that i wouldn't love to do many other things with you but you're intoxicated and i don't want to take advantage of you i gasp surprised he beams and i laugh a little i admit so then about 40 pages later zed asks tessa out on a date and tessa thinks why not he's very attractive and seems sweet he didn't take advantage of me when he easily could have the standards are truly on the ground you guys this is the most ridiculous thing i've ever read my entire life it doesn't make sense i know i keep saying that in this review but nothing in this book makes sense like i can't even fathom what is going on in this girl's head like she's actually sitting there being like oh well you know he's nice and he's attractive and he didn't try to assault me when i was clearly drunk and vulnerable he must be a great guy i should go out with him like oh oh my god and i'm not even pissed about this for myself because i know that this stuff is wrong it's those 14 15 16 year old girls who you know like don't even try to deny it you know that they're reading this book if they haven't already read it in its fan fiction format what kind of message is this to be sending to them it's awful there's another part of this book that really bothered me it was only like a sentence but i remember getting so pissed that i facetimed my friends in seattle like to rant about this part so in this scene hardin and tessa are getting down and dirty tessa is touching hardin and he orgasms and this is what tessa says in response to that my chest heats filling with a strange new sense that i'm now one step closer to being a woman like what is going on like genuinely what is going on in this book did i miss the memo did i skip that day in sex ed where we learned that being a woman means that you get a guy off is is that what being a woman is because that's such heteronormative misogynistic if there was a venn diagram of getting a guy off and being a woman those two circles wouldn't even overlap if that makes sense it probably makes more sense than this scene does honestly all right you guys so the time has come the time has come to discuss harden scott who quite honestly doesn't really have a personality apart from having tattoos and being a manipulative abusive like that's it that's his character i found over 16 instances and situations in this book in which hardin displayed manipulative abusive and just downright awful behavior towards tessa and that is just i mean even just one is too much it's it was terrible so in this instance i honestly can't remember why they were fighting or what harden is angry about i don't even think it matters because what he says is just so awful he tells her you're not innocent here you provoke me on purpose you always push my buttons you constantly fight with me you go on dates with zed i mean you think i like being this way do you think i like you having this control over me i hate the way you get under my skin i loathe the way i can't seem to stop thinking about you i hate you i really do you're such a pretentious little and then it trails off is this meant to be romantic like i'm pretty sure that this is meant to be romantic and like this big declaration of love like oh i love you so much i hate you i can't stand seeing you with other people you provoke me into doing this just because i love you so much when this is abusive behavior like textbook abusive behavior blaming someone else for your mistakes your tantrums your yelling you being like awful to her that is a red flag if i ever saw one in a book and i can't believe that like we are meant to sympathize with this guy and think of him as the hero and the guy that we're supposed to want to be with like i see people on twitter being like oh i want harden i want to harden in my life i want that's like no you really don't okay and if there's a hardened in your life you should get him out of it because he's awful and then at another point in the book they've moved in together at this point and hardin comes home and tessa's asking him about his job and his day and he is being really curt with her and he says you ask too many questions all the time you don't need to know every detail about my life which is like you're living with this girl and you're upset that she's asking you about how your day went like what the and she even kind of calls him out but like he just doesn't even acknowledge that he doesn't acknowledge that he's being a total dick for no reason and then a few pages later he comes home after not telling her where he was all night and he's drunk and she tells him like hey it's a school night where have you been and he says it's a school night he mocks me could you be more of a square and then when she gets rightfully pissed at him for being a douche for no reason he says oh baby don't be mad at me do you really want me to go you know what happens when i sleep without you like oh my god he was just such an and then he's like oh that i can't sleep without you and you don't want to make me upset like you know how much i hurt when you're not sleeping next to me like that is just so manipulative and disgusting the other thing about hardin is that he's just violent like physically violent with other people for no goddamn reason there's another scene where they're at a party and there are a few people there that harden doesn't really like and they're all playing the game suck and blow which if you don't know what it is basically you have a people all in the circle and you've got a piece of paper or a playing card and you pass it along through your mouth and if the card falls you have to kiss the other person so naturally the card falls when it gets to tessa and the guy leans in to kiss her and then harden just goes berserk he starts beating this guy to a pulp it was scary when tess is watching she says for a second i wonder if hardin would have done the same were we on the concrete porch or near the fire pit stones and i feel like my answer comes in the form of harden raising one fifth high and slamming it into dan's draw like oh my god you are literally standing there thinking that your boyfriend or whatever the hell he is is capable of beating someone possibly to death and you're okay with that and then a few pages later in the same chapter tessa says even though i just witnessed him completely losing his temper in the worst way possible i know that he would never physically hurt me like what kind of book is this that the main character has to justify that it's okay that she's in this mentally and emotionally abusive relationship just because the guy doesn't physically hurt her like honestly the standards are just on the ground they aren't even on the ground they're like in the earth's core that's how low they are and tarden is just so controlling and possessive of tessa like there's this one part where she calls her ex-boyfriend noah who she's known her entire life and is basically like her best friend and hardin tells her you have no reason to be talking to him he probably thinks you want him back since you answered the call call him right now and tell him not to call again who are you who do you think you are to tell her who to talk to if she wants to talk to her ex-boyfriend she can like why are you so freaking insecure don't project that on her and then of course the cherry on top is when harden says i won't let him try to take what is mine there's one part where she says hardin repeatedly breaks my heart even when i don't think there are any more pieces to break and i love him i love hardin love is not supposed to hurt you like that like the person that you love is supposed to make you feel good about yourself like bare minimum they should not make you miserable and that's all that harden does in this book and she says it like he makes me miserable he breaks my heart and yet i love him like that's that's not okay so later tessa says i am his distraction the thought of me being what hardin needs makes me feel needed in a way i wasn't aware of i feel more solid now more necessary in his life i get that it feels nice to be wanted by somebody and maybe even needed but this just sounds so codependent and it's definitely not going to lead anywhere good like it's just oh i don't understand why this is the kind of relationship that people want to aspire to or think is cute or romantic because it's none of those things and i understand that there's some people who may say you know i don't necessarily want a relationship like theirs i don't necessarily want a guy like hardin i just think it's fun and i just want to read it which is fine if that's you then that's fine but there are some people some younger people who might be reading this and internalizing what they're reading and thinking that it's okay for someone that they love to act like harden and that it's desirable for someone to be possessive and manipulative and you know love you so much that they hate you when that's not what a relationship should be not what a healthy one should be and then there's this other part like i know it seems like i'm overloading you guys with a lot of quotes from the book but i need you to know that i'm not just like pulling this out of my ass like they're actual awful abusive things in this book listen tessa says i feel like we've gone back in time to when i first met him and he would purposefully make me cry on an almost daily basis and then i think hardin says something that makes her upset and she says he said it that way just to hurt me like he is purposefully trying to hurt her he would make her cry every single day like this is not okay why was this published why is this being made into a movie while i was reading this i just felt so sad for tessa because she has moments that i've shown you guys that she knows that she's in a bad relationship she knows that hardin is toxic and manipulative and abusive and yet the narrative keeps pushing her back to him saying that it's okay because they love each other it's okay for them to be together and for these kinds of stuff to happen like i said at the beginning of this video i was doing a little bit of research well like research i was just looking at twitter and instagram to be honest with you i was looking into what people were talking about when it came to this movie and this book and everybody kept bringing up this pride and prejudice class discussion even the author brought it up so while i was reading i was on the lookout for the scene i'm a huge fan of pride and prejudice so i was kind of looking forward to it and i figured if everybody was talking about it including the author then it must be an important emotional pivotal scene and then i finally got to it and yeah um it was dumb like it was just so dumb i really shouldn't be surprised but there it is so in the scene hardin and tessa are in their english lit class and everyone's discussing pride and prejudice and they're mostly focusing on whether or not elizabeth and darcy should have ended up together and then hardin starts talking about how darcy was manipulative and that elizabeth was this big idiot to go back to him and you could just tell that he was self-inserting himself as darcy which like honestly stay in your lane because there's no way you were near the perfection that it fits william darcy and then tessa fires back saying something along the lines of elizabeth being trusting and kind and how that's not a bad thing i honestly can't remember because it was so dumb and once again she's self-inserting as elizabeth which like honestly you wish the thing about this scene is that it's just so unrealistic like if this were to happen in real life a couple going off on each other in the middle of class you best believe that the professor would be shutting that down and how awkward is that to witness these two like annoying ass people fighting and airing their dirty laundry out in front of everybody like that would never happen in real life it does not make sense just like most of the things that happened in this novel also harden and tessa are both english majors so they're both really into books and reading tessa even wants to go into the publishing industry as a career which is fine like sometimes i just wish the authors could come up with different hobbies and interests for their characters besides like reading and writing but that's neither here nor there what i really want to talk about is the fact that throughout the book hardin and tessa will constantly be talking about classic novels in literature and tessa will see it as this you know huge connection between them and she'll kind of talk about it as if it's some redeeming quality of pardons that he reads like austin or dickens when honestly like any off the street can read those books it does not mean that they're a good person or make them any less of an for doing so so finally let's talk about that ending you guys um it was the biggest load of i've ever read in my life so basically we find out that tessa and hardin's relationship is a lie at the beginning of the novel at some party when tessa wasn't around harden and all of his friends made a bet about whether or not he could take her virginity and throughout the novel hardin just kept pushing back the date of when he was supposed to have her virginity by um that sounds really weird but there's no other way that i can say that really they were all betting money and hardin kept threatening people and paying them off to not tell tessa anything um he basically pretty much forced her i guess because she was unaware of all this into living with him um throughout the novel tessa had pushed away her mother and all of her friends and stuff to be with him so now she's kind of left with nothing um i don't even know what to say about that like that's just it just is what it is and what it is is dumb so yeah if i wasn't already completely done with this book and this series i definitely am now there are three more books after this one each of them averaging about 700 pages i'm not choking 700 pages per book and i cannot and will not do that to myself i love myself and respect myself too much to do that so that's it for me today you guys i hope you enjoyed this video if you did like subscribe comment down below let me know if you've heard of this book or if you've read it yourself and what your thoughts were i'd really like to know all of my social media links are in the description below so check those out if you would like and i'll see you guys next time bye [Music] this

Channel: FullofLit

Views: 90,361

Rating: 4.7106609 out of 5

Keywords: rant review, after review, anna todd, book talk, book rant, book discussion, abuse, abusive relationship, problematic, problematic book, problematic books, trash book, unpopular opinion, fanfiction, one direction, hessa, harry styles, book review, new adult, romance, romance book, booktube, book tube, booktuber, rant, review, terrible books, worst book i've ever read, bad books, least favorite books, bookish, bookish pet peeves, books i hate, tropes i hate, fulloflit

Id: gOKfrGbvjBo

Length: 28min 14sec (1694 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 27 2018