Before Ever After

Loved it. The hero gets blown to pieces in the prologue, leaving Shelley, the heroine, a rich if heartbroken young widow. So the story is shown in flashback style, a la The Time Traveler's Wife, but this is a very different book. Yes, it's a love story, and it's happy, and sad, and there's much mystery as the story unfolds, but it's also light and funny, with tasty turns of phrase sprinkled in: "Shelly made do with a breakfast of burned toast slathered with trans-fat-free disappointment."

I fell in love with Max and Shelley, with Max's baked eggs with cheese - and chicken obsession, with The Slight Detour (which I so want to take) trip across Europe. Sotto does a wonderful job weaving in historical places and events and sensual details. show more My only quibble is sometimes her metaphors are a little overdone. When Shelley was bothered by a big yellow and black bee buzzing around her, I thought it was an actual bee, and it threw me off, though the elephant lumbering after them, after their first kiss worked. There is a magic/paranormal element, but if you pick it up looking specifically for that, there probably won't be enough to satisfy you. show less

I thought I knew what to expect going into this novel. The synopsis seemed to indicate that the reader was in for a journey across Europe with a young widow named Shelley and the grandson of the man to whom she was married (and who is apparently immortal). I figured I was in for an academic journey of sorts - the duo chasing down clues across Europe, getting closer to finding the location and identity of Shelley's wayward husband.

In reality, the journey in question was only the framework for the novel told almost entirely in flashbacks - flashbacks to Shelley's trip across Europe with Max when they first met. But even this is just a frame for the further-flashbacks to Max's history across time, stories from his other lives. The novel show more is a literary Russian doll - tales within tales - but with about as much depth as the toy. The story is entertaining, the flashbacks are varied, but inside the colorful veneer, the tale is empty. I never felt like I knew the characters. They felt more like a collection of clichés and caricatures than actual people. The piled-upon tragedies were clearly meant to tug at the heartstrings, but I never felt like I had gotten to know any of the characters in any of the flashbacks well enough to care about their fates. Even the conclusion, meant to evoke an emotional response in the reader, failed to move me. Unlike Max's beloved baked egg and cheese breakfast, this novel wasn't filling - more of a light snack than a meal. And afterwards, I was still hungry for something with more substance. show less

Before Ever After by Samantha Sotto is a debut novel that seemingly asks readers to suspend disbelief as Shelley Gallus discovers that her deceased husband, Max, may not have died three years ago and that he may in fact not ever age. Oh, and he has a grandson, Paolo, from Italy who is now about 30 years old. However, Sotto weaves her story with such beautiful prose that readers are immediately captivated and drawn into Shelley’s grief and her shock. There is no conscious need to suspend disbelief, and readers will not even notice that they are doing it.

“Shelley’s ability to go through the motions wasn’t surprising considering that she had been schooled by the best. Her mom had never quite gotten over the death of her own show more husband, and Shelley grew up watching her paint on the brightest smile with a berry shade of Revlon lipstick. There had been days when her happiness had seemed so real, so genuine, that Shelley had almost believed it.” (Page 7 of ARC)

Death can leave a terrible emptiness in someone, especially when the person who dies is so ingrained and integral to their lives. Sotto’s novel is more than a look a grief or the secrets spouses keep from one another; it is a journey through history that takes Shelley and Paolo through several countries and sheds light on Max’s past. The narration shifts from present to immediate past (about five years ago when Max and Shelley first meet) to the distant past as Max recounts history in France, Austria, Slovenia, and other places.

Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2011/08/before-ever-after-by-samantha-sotto.html show less

This is ambitious. Hedonism, existentialism, darkness, resilience, comedy, familial love, romantic love, true love – themes that are explored in this novel that at some point in our lives, we’ve experienced either in a small, medium or encompassing way. The clever use of vignettes to portray these themes as Max is constructed (or deconstructed depending on an individual’s point of view) is where, in my opinion, the ambition of the book coincides with its brilliance.
All in all, the combination of the vignettes and the various contexts it gives, the dry Brit humor, excellent historical backdrops, and the dash of the supernatural make this an excellent and entertaining read for the summer. Definitely a two thumbs up.

Summary: Shelley is still recovering from the sudden death of her husband Max three years ago, when her world is turned upside-down by the arrival of a stranger on her doorstep. That stranger is Paolo, a young man who claims that the man that Shelly knew as her husband was also his grandfather... and he has childhood pictures to support his claims. Not only does Max appear not to age, but Paolo claims that he is still alive and well, living on the other side of the world. As they travel to confront him, Shelley tells Paolo the story of how they met - Max was the leader of a quirky European tour group - and struggles to reconcile herself to the idea that the man she thought she knew, the man who was her whole life, may have had secrets show more that she never could have imagined.

Review: As much as I generally enjoy books that involve a series of short stories that are tied together by a longer arc, it's frequently the case that I enjoy the stories more than the story that connects them. And in this case, while I enjoyed the book as a whole, there were a few issues that bugged me in the overarching story that weren't present in the historical stories.

I think my primary issue was that it didn't quite work for me as a romance. In order to really connect with Shelley and the various emotions she goes through over the course of the story, you need to find Max as wonderful as she does... and I just didn't. Part of this is because - especially in the early stages of the book - Sotto seems to treat Max's collection of quirks as satisfactory character development, so he didn't feel like like a person so much as like a character. This thankfully got much better as the book went on and Max was allowed become multi-dimensional more naturally. But early on, all I had to go on was his flirting, which was aiming for charming but struck me as more superficial. Some of the writing also didn't quite hit the tone it was aiming for; there were some metaphors that fell flat and some recurring prose quirks that didn't work for me.

But! The good news is that even though I didn't quite connect with the main characters, I loved the idea for the book, and the historical stories were great. Sotto's passion for off-the-beaten-path European travel really shines through, and she's able to vividly evoke the atmosphere of every place they visit. (On a related note, how badly do I want to take a European vacation right now?) Sotto also does a nice job in establishing a different voice for each of the historical stories, making each one feel like a real experience from a unique perspective. Also impressive was how clear she was able to keep her multiple layers of interlocking stories.

Overall, I think this was a solid debut novel. It's unique and creative, well-constructed and interesting. It did have some parts that didn't work, although some of those were a matter of personal preference, and some are things that I think will improve as Sotto develops as a writer. And even though I didn't necessarily love every word, the bottom line is that I was always inspired to keep reading more. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: I think Before Ever After would be best for people who like their love stories sweet but with a bit of a twist, especially if they also like historical fiction. show less

A readable, amibitious debut novel, Samanta Sotto's Before Ever After (Crown, 2011) takes some common novelistic tropes and adds some less common twists and turns to make them interesting. Told in short chapters covering the present day, the near-past, and various historical points (which matter for a reason I probably shouldn't share in order to avoid spoilers), the book is chock full of witty humor while still managing to be a touching story of love's timelessness.

A fine, fast, read. I'll be on the lookout for Sotto's next.

What if “they lived happily ever after” doesn’t apply to you? Before Ever After is an exploration into the “before” and its impact on a grieving woman’s life.

Shelley Gallus lost her happy life when her husband, Max, was blown up by a bomb while she spoke to him on the phone. Three years later, Paolo knocks on her door, claiming to be her thirty-two year old husband’s thirty-two year old grandson. Could Max possibly still be alive?

In blind haste, she boards a plane to the Philippines with Paolo, for the most important journey of her life. During their trip, Shelley tells Paolo the story of how she and Max met and her experience with him as a tour guide. If Shelley and Paolo can piece together their mutual understanding of show more Max, maybe they can find the truth.

Samantha Sotto began researching this book years before the idea to write it hit her. She studied, lived and backpacked extensively through Europe and explored crooked cobblestone alleys and mysterious corners that hinted of stories not written in history books. Before Ever After is an entertaining tour through the ages in Europe and a most unusual love story.

The enjoyment lies in the book’s journey, not in Shelley’s understanding of Max and his grandson. Ms. Sotto unleashes her fertile imagination in this unconventional adult fairy tale. She creatively weaves romance, historical fiction, mystery and the supernatural into a fun, witty book. The flashbacks and time and location changes are, however, a bit convoluted. Readers must stay on their toes to keep track of all the characters in the stories within the story. If you stick with it, you’ll find the improbability of some of the book’s scenes add to its charm. The author’s youthful zeal for European travel pops off the pages.

Recommended for devotees of European culture, historic places and mystical love stories.

The Crown Publishing Group graciously supplied the advance review copy. The opinions expressed are unbiased and wholly that of the reviewer.

Reviewed by Holly Weiss, author of Crestmont show less