The Struggle to Read & Rosamund Lupton

An "Out of Sync" Life is how it is with me these days. I so want to read more than a bit, but sitting on the couch or anywhere else reminds me too much of the 3 months I was off my feet. So I immediately seek to "do" something, anything at all, aside from an activity that has me sitting in one place. I will say that, as a result, the house is starting to look better than it has in months and months, though much more must be done, before I can rise above my region-wide reputation that I clean house only once every five years.

This summer feels completely different from my 2011 "Summer of the Book," when it was hard to get me to do much else other than read and hike a bit. I stretched my reading horizons far beyond what I had ever experienced. (I'm incredibly nostalgic about last summer.)

Susan, our town librarian, knows all about my reading plight, so she saved a book for me that she declared was one I wouldn't be able to put down. It's Rosamund Lupton's Afterwards, published in the US in the first week of June. Susan read it in nothing flat, and then gave it to me--thank you, Susan! You may recall that Lupton is the UK author of last summer's Sister, which got rave reviews. Did you read it or hear about it, by any chance?

I must admit I find Afterwards an intensely compelling and highly original read. It's a book that's difficult to categorize, but it definitely lands in the psychological thriller department, though I don't know when I've identified with a female protagonist in a thriller more powerfully. I may never have been a mother, but no book has made me feel more like one than Afterwards has.