Review: Afterparty by Ann Redisch Stampler

Title: Afterparty

Author: Ann Redisch Stampler

Publisher: Simone Pulse

Release date: January 7th 2014

Pages: 384

Genre: Young Adult contemporary

Source: I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher. Thanks!

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Emma is tired of being good. Always the dutiful daughter to an overprotective father, she is the antithesis of her mother -- whose name her dad won't even say out loud. That's why meeting Siobhan is the best thing that ever happened to her...and the most dangerous. Because Siobhan is fun and alluring and experienced and lives on the edge. In other words, she's everything Emma is not.
And it may be more than Emma can handle.
Because as intoxicating as her secret life may be, when Emma begins to make her own decisions, Siobhan starts to unravel. It's more than just Dylan, the boy who comes between them. Their high-stakes pacts are spinning out of control. Elaborate lies become second nature. Loyalties and boundaries are blurred. And it all comes to a head at the infamous Afterparty, where debauchery rages and an intense, inescapable confrontation ends in a plummet from the rooftop...

My rating: 2 out of 5 stars

I wanted to like Afterparty. It sounded intriguing, like it would have fascinating, messed-up characters and interesting drama. Sadly, though, that turned out to be the problem with this novel: the characters, while messed-up and potentially intriguing, are underdeveloped and simply annoying, and the drama was overdone and repetitive instead of fun to read about.

Emma is simply not a character I could connect with. She had a lot of potential to be an interesting character, but it just didn't work. Her family background is underdeveloped: I would have liked to see more about her past and her mother, but that is only mentioned in passing, without any kind of insight into the emotional side of this storyline. Her relationship with her dad, too, is underdeveloped: we're always told how overprotective he is, but it seemed overdone to me, and we never get to see any kind of development in that relationship. A lack of development or character growth is one of my main problems with Emma: her struggle with whether to be "good" or "bad" could have been interesting, but it's very underdeveloped, and she goes from relatively innocent to crazy within a page. There is no real development; her fight with herself about being "good" or "bad" is simply repeated over and over again. Even with the underdeveloped characterization, Emma is a character that annoyed me to no end. She's very whiny and melodramatic about her issues: instead of solving anything, she just keeps whining and getting herself into the same stupid situations over and over again.

The secondary characters are just as bad. Siobhan could have been an intriguing character, if we had gotten to know her better and attempted to understand where she is coming from. But we never get any kind of background for her character; she's just "bad" for no reason. The same goes for Dylan: he's supposed to be perfect, but he annoyed me with his indecisiveness and the way that he uses Emma. The relationships are underdeveloped: how did Siobhan and Emma start being friends? How did Emma start liking Dylan? It's instalove, and the friendship equivalent of instalove, and it's all very melodramatic.

Asides from the characters, the preachy tone is what bothered me most about Afterparty. Emma's portrayal of what is right and what is wrong struck me as very judgmental: most of the things Siobhan wants her to do, while not the smartest decisions, aren't things that would make you a bad person. Having sex does not make you a bad person. Staying out late does not make you a bad person. Drinking does not make you a bad person. Smoking weed does not make you a bad person. Doing any drugs does not make you a bad person. No, they're not smart decisions, but Siobhan's drug abuse does not make her a bad person; it just expresses her issues. Emma acts like these things would turn her - and other people who have done comparable things - into a horrible person. Preachy messages like that always bother me. 

Afterparty sounded like a great read, but it just didn't work out for me. It might be because I'm just too old for such high-school drama types of books. Then again, some of the topics in the book aren't appropriate to the younger set of YA readers, so I'm not sure what age group this book could be good for. Either way, the melodrama, the annoying characters, and the preachy message made it impossible for me to like Afterparty.

Interview with Ann Redisch Stampler (Where It Began Blog Tour)

Today we have Ann Redisch Stampler here for an author interview! This post is part of The Teen Book Scene's blog tour for Where It Began by Ann Redisch Stampler. You can find out all about the tour here. Make sure to visit all the other stops if you'd like to know more about Where It Began!



1. The cover for Where It Began is gorgeous! What did you imagine it would look like? Is it similar to the actual cover, or did you imagine something completely different?

Thank you, I love the cover, too! Initially, I was envisioning a cover that emphasized the car wreck and the wreck of Gabby’s carefully constructed life. A smoke and flames kind of thing. But I realized very quickly that this cover was beautiful and perfect.

I want to add that my love for this cover isn’t just aesthetic. As I think about it, Where It Began is about what grows out of everything that Gabby goes through, how she makes it past the wreckage. And this is very much that kind of a cover, with a pensive, intelligent girl, maybe a bit shell-shocked, looking inward but also toward the future.

2. I've read you started out with picture books. What made you want to give YA a shot?

You know, I still write picture books! I have an Afghani folk tale, The Wooden Sword, coming out six days before Where It Began. I love picture books, especially richly illustrated folk tales and fairy tales. But that doesn’t answer your question.

I was an English major. I have always loved novels.

I started writing in a serious way when my kids were very small, when I was reading a lot of picture books, and I was kind of in love with them. But I always had bits and pieces of novels kicking around that I wanted to write but never felt able to write. This went on for years.

And then my youngest child left for college and I went, whoa, that was fast! Suddenly, I had much less of a sense of obligation in terms of having a somewhat regular, orderly domestic life (my poor husband) and I just hid out in my den and wrote.

3. How do you go about choosing names for your characters?

I don’t really have a process for it. My characters tend to come to me first; I visualize them walking around; and then I just kind of know what their names should be.

Although sometimes I do have to change names. For example, as I read through the first ARC, I realized that I had two very minor characters (neither one appears in the story, but other people talk about them) named Caitlyn within a few pages of each other. Whoops!

4. What's the best writing advice you ever received?

I keep repeating it all over town, but it’s Jane Yolen’s “butt in chair.” You can have the most brilliant idea and the most astonishing command of the English language ever, but you still have to sit down and do it.

5. Without spoiling anything, can you tell us what was your favorite scene to write in Where It Began?

It’s the Big Revelation Scene. If you’ve read the book, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I love the bit that leads up to it, when the tension is building, and then something else happens, which was enormously fun to write because I love the adult character involved so much, and then they’re up the stairs and wham!

Thanks for the great interview answers, Ann!


Visit Ann on her website, blog, Twitter and Facebook, and keep your eye out for Where It Began, which will be released March 6th.

Where It Began by Ann Redisch Stampler
(Amazon | Goodreads)

Gabby Gardiner wakes up in a hospital bed looking like a cautionary ad for drunk driving and lacking a single memory of the accident that landed her there. What she can remember, in frank and sardonic detail, is the year leading up to the accident.
As she takes us through her transformation from invisible girl to on-trend Girl Who Dates Billy Nash (aka Most Desirable Boy Ever), she is left wondering: Why is Billy suddenly distancing himself from her? What do her classmates know that Gabby herself does not? Who exactly was in the car that night? And why is Gabby left alone to take the fall?
Putting the pieces together will take every ounce of Gabby's strength. As she peels back the layers of her life, she begins to realize that her climb up the status ladder has been as intoxicating as it has been morally complex...and that nothing about her life is what she has imagined it to be.