'After' By Anna Todd Is Overrated, Don't @ Me | The Odyssey Online
Start writing a post
Entertainment

Anna Todd's 'After' Is Overrated And Does Not Live Up To The Hype, Don't @ Me

I wouldn't waste my time if I were you, but sometimes hate-watching is fun.

586
After Movie Trailer

"After" is the best-selling kickstarting book to the seven-part series by Anna Todd. Before being sold in print, on tangible pages, Todd's book was found in the not-so-deep depths of Wattpad's fanfiction listings.

Originally, "After" was a series of Harry Styles fanfictions, also featuring his former One Direction bandmates Niall, Zayn, Louis, and Liam. As a well seasoned Harry fanfic reader myself, I had heard of it before it made its way into print and now onto the semi-big screen (it's a movie, now, too, but only in a few theaters). My friends raved about it, claiming it was the best fanfiction they'd ever read. My cousin even posted about it on Facebook a few weeks ago, saying it was the best book she had read in a while.

But, I read the description when it was on Wattpad (a popular online medium for writers of novels, poetry, short stories, etc. to post their content into the world) and was less than impressed. It sounded just like all the other cliché fanfictions about a bad boy, so I never read it ... until last week.

To my surprise, it was awful.

I don't mean cringe-every-page-but-still-keep-reading sucked. I mean I-got-about-a-hundred-pages-in-and-couldn't-bare-to-keep-reading sucked.

How did it suck, exactly?

For starters, I'll cut the book some slack on its inaccuracies of college dorms. You don't share a closet with your roommate. Freshmen don't live with sophomores. Frat houses are not miles and miles away from campus. These inaccuracies are not the main faults of the book, though I definitely noticed them.

Tessa and "Hardin," who we all know is really Harry Styles (movie Hardin even has the same tattoos as Harry, just in different places), are unrealistically hot and cold. No one says or does these things that they're doing. Let's be real if someone actually did any of the crappy things Hardin does to Tessa in real life, they wouldn't keep going back to them.

There are also a lot of plot holes, that may seem minor to others but stuck out to me like sore thumbs as just poor writing technique. One example is when a character has to fly home for the weekend for his girlfriend's birthday, then a few pages later that same character says his family lives close to campus. Which one is it, exactly?

While I understand that this series originally was only meant to be a hobby and a little project Anna Todd did in her free time, one that just happened to become a worldwide phenomenon, there seems to be little care editorially in between publishing her books for fangirls online versus printing it for Simon & Schuster as an actual book.

Maybe I would feel differently about this had I read it while it was still available for free on Wattpad, and I knew that it hadn't gone through the hands of an editing team.

The fact is, it did go through an editing team and presumably several rereads by the author herself, and it still sucked.

It's just not worth anyone's time, and if I were you, I'd save myself the time and I wouldn't go anywhere near this.

Report this Content
This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
student sleep
Huffington Post

I think the hardest thing about going away to college is figuring out how to become an adult. Leaving a household where your parents took care of literally everything (thanks, Mom!) and suddenly becoming your own boss is overwhelming. I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job of being a grown-up, but once in awhile I do something that really makes me feel like I'm #adulting. Twenty-somethings know what I'm talking about.

Keep Reading...Show less
school
blogspot

I went to a small high school, like 120-people-in-my-graduating-class small. It definitely had some good and some bad, and if you also went to a small high school, I’m sure you’ll relate to the things that I went through.

1. If something happens, everyone knows about it

Who hooked up with whom at the party? Yeah, heard about that an hour after it happened. You failed a test? Sorry, saw on Twitter last period. Facebook fight or, God forbid, real fight? It was on half the class’ Snapchat story half an hour ago. No matter what you do, someone will know about it.

Keep Reading...Show less
Chandler Bing

I'm assuming that we've all heard of the hit 90's TV series, Friends, right? Who hasn't? Admittedly, I had pretty low expectations when I first started binge watching the show on Netflix, but I quickly became addicted.

Without a doubt, Chandler Bing is the most relatable character, and there isn't an episode where I don't find myself thinking, Yup, Iam definitely the Chandler of my friend group.

Keep Reading...Show less
eye roll

Working with the public can be a job, in and of itself. Some people are just plain rude for no reason. But regardless of how your day is going, always having to be in the best of moods, or at least act like it... right?

1. When a customer wants to return a product, hands you the receipt, where is printed "ALL SALES ARE FINAL" in all caps.

2. Just because you might be having a bad day, and you're in a crappy mood, doesn't make it okay for you to yell at me or be rude to me. I'm a person with feelings, just like you.

3. People refusing to be put on hold when a customer is standing right in front of you. Oh, how I wish I could just hang up on you!

Keep Reading...Show less
blair waldorf
Hercampus.com

RBF, or resting b*tch face, is a serious condition that many people suffer from worldwide. Suffers are often bombarded with daily questions such as "Are you OK?" and "Why are you so mad?" If you have RBF, you've probably had numerous people tell you to "just smile!"

While this question trend can get annoying, there are a couple of pros to having RBF.

Keep Reading...Show less

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Facebook Comments