Book Review: The Before Now and After Then by Peter Monn

Danny Goldstein has always lived in the shadow of his identical, twin brother Sam. But when a hurricane of events forces him into the spotlight, he starts to realize that the only thing he’s truly afraid of is himself. 

With the help of his costume changing friend Cher, a famous gay uncle with a mysterious past of his own, two aging punk rocker parents and Rusty, the boy who will become his something to live for, Danny begins to realize that the music of the heart is truly the soundtrack for living.

Received from Netgalley in exchange for a review.

I wanted to like this book.  And there were times where I did, but unfortunately they were very few and mostly clustered in the beginning and end.

The writing was… very mediocre.  It had the problem of way over-sharing.  It was more like a bulleted list of “this happened, and then this, and then this” where a lot of the non-essential events that did nothing but fill the gaps between actions could have been cut.  And of course related to this, it tended to gloss over important things.  They spend time being excited about something, and then it happens but it only takes about a paragraph, literally “And then this happened” and a scene change sometimes.

It was also extremely cheesy.  I felt like I was reading a daytime soap opera instead of a young adult novel about teenagers who would never talk like that.  There was simply too much effort put into making them seem like they were in love and apparently not enough thought into the actual book and its plot.

One of the consistency problems I had is a spoiler so tread with care.  Danny’s friend share ends up being pregnant and it turns out she’s an entire three months along.  She says she had been suspecting for a while and after she gets over the shock, Danny says she is “Almost like the old Cher.” Except he never knew the old Cher.  If she was preparing for the prospect that she could be pregnant that’s all he knew of her- and this entire book takes place, except for the last chapter’s time skip, over the course of about two weeks.

There’s also the smaller one where Danny asks about and is told TWICE that his mom, her best friend and his father are reforming a band they had in college.  Listen if you’re going to ask a question Danny, because otherwise I’m chalking it up to bad editing.

Honestly it’s not bad and most inoffensive towards the groups it’s trying to support so it isn’t a complete flop.  But it reads a lot more like a first draft than it should.