What Comes After Review

What Comes After
Steve Watkins

Publisher: Candlewick Press
Release Date: April 12, 2011
Series: N/A
Genre: YA, Contemporary
Pages: Hardcover, 334 pages
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5 (Avg 4/5)

A gripping portrait of a teen’s struggles through grief and abuse - and the miraculous power of animals to heal us.

After her veterinarian dad dies, sixteen-year-old Iris Wight must leave her beloved Maine to live on a North Carolina farm with her hardbitten aunt and a cousin she barely knows. Iris, a vegetarian and animal lover, immediately clashes with Aunt Sue, who mistreats the livestock, spends Iris’s small inheritance, and thinks nothing of striking Iris for the smallest offense. Things come to a head when Iris sets two young goats free to save them from slaughter, and an enraged Aunt Sue orders her brutish son, Book, to beat Iris senseless - a horrific act that lands Book and his mother in jail. Sent to live with an offbeat foster family and their "dooking" ferrets, Iris must find a way to take care of the animals back at the farm, even if it means confronting Aunt Sue. Powerful and deeply moving, this compelling novel affirms the redemptive power of animals and the resilience of the human spirit.

After reading this novel, the first thought through my mind was how unusual it was to have a book about a female character that focused more on her growth as a character rather than a romance. Did I mind it? Absolutely not! It was a refreshing change of scenery. Scenery that included one incredibly written main character... and animals. Yes, animals! Do I have your attention yet, fellow animal lovers?

Iris is one of those characters that you cannot help but love. Her best character is that she is human. She's relatable in the way that she's kind and very caring, yet she still has flaws - she takes falls and she struggles. Yet every time she falls, she has the resilience to get back up, dust herself off and move on. I love her for that. Her foster parents added some nice quirk to the novel while her aunt Sue and cousin Book... well, what they added I wouldn't exactly call 'quirk'. I sometimes felt a little for Book, but there was never a good excuse for what he and his aunt put Iris (and the animals) through.

This book is heavy - and I'm not talking about it's physical weight. If you're looking for a light-hearted book to read and feel good afterward, I would look the other way. This book is emotionally devastating and tugs at your heartstrings like no other. Don't get me wrong, it's a GREAT book! Just be prepared to cry... a lot.

Blog Tour Guest Post: Into The Past with Steve Watkins

Today it is my honor to welcome Steve Watkins to Missy's Reads & Reviews as part of the tour for his novel, What Comes After. Steve was asked what books he would recommend to his past self at ages 5, 10, 15 and 20. Below is his answer. Enjoy!




At 5: Doctor Dan the Band-Aid Man, awesome because it had a little pouch inside the back cover with REAL BANDAIDS! Also at 5: every single picture book in our little town library. My mom’s only rule for how many I could check out at one time was that I had to be able to carry them all myself. That’s why I was so buff as a child—because of all that heavy, heavy lifting. I would read in the car until mom made me get out, read lying down on the carport until she made me get up, read on the back porch until she made me come inside, read on my bunk bed until she made me turn out the lights, read under the covers with a flashlight until the battery died.

At 10: Every Hardy Boy mystery and Alfred Hitchcock Presents mystery and Andre Norton fantasy and Chip Hilton sports book and exactly one Nancy Drew mystery, just to see if I could live with the secret shame of reading a girl’s book (I couldn’t; social pressure was just too great….). Best book ever: The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill. And my first grown-up book, The Virginian, which was the first place I ever read actual cussing.

At 15: The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I crawled into that hole and stayed there for a couple of years, with a Led Zeppelin soundtrack to keep me company. Also Love Story. And The Godfather.

At 20: Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five, David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest, The Last Best Hope, The Once and Future King, A.S. Neill’s Summerhill, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Frederic Nietzsche, Tom Robbins’ Another Roadside Attraction, Shogun, Johnny Got His Gun, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, The Confessions of Nat Turner, Trout Fishing in America, Season of the Witch, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, I could go on but I don’t think you have enough room on your wonderful blog.