Review: BEFORE by Anna Todd (After #5) + GIVEAWAY

BEFORE Hardin met Tessa he was a raging storm. DURING those first moments they met, he realized he needed to keep her for himself—his life depended on it. AFTER they got together, the world would never be the same.

Hardin and Tessa’s dramatic love affair became a vortex pulling in everyone around them. For the first time these others are given voice as they appear before, during, and after the events in original After novels. Alongside them, Hardin’s account of his first encounters with Tessa—which will change what you thought you knew about the brooding boy and the angel who loved him.

DISCLAIMER: BEFORE is the 5^th book in the AFTER series, and I 100% recommend you finish reading all 4 predecessors. BEFORE is a retelling of some of the scenes in AFTER but also contains POVs from other characters in the series that disclose things that happen only in later books. 

Check out my review for the previous 4 books:
AFTER
AFTER We Collided
AFTER We Fell
AFTER Ever Happy

Welcome back to the roller coaster of emotions 

When BEFORE was announced, it felt like early Christmas! 

We get to see inside Hardin’s head in 3 of the 4 prior books but we don’t in AFTER, and I would be lying if I said that there weren’t countless times that I felt like screaming “Hardin what were you thinking!??!”

Well now we do, we get to see what was going on in his head!
BEFORE is so much more than just a retelling. Yes we definitely get some of AFTER told in his point of view but we also take a look into the past and the future and we also hear from some of the other characters, and some things we learn just make so much sense when considering what we already know. That was one of the surprising parts in BEFORE, I didn't think I could hate Stephanie any more than I did, but after being in her head I was proven wrong, the same with Molly but in reverse. 

In AFTER we see how Hardin wreaks havoc in Tessa's life and now we have the chance to see how she turned his world upside down.

 

“She was strategically placed at Washington Central by someone or something more powerful than him --- to taunt him. He – or it – knew who he was, the kind of person he was known for being, and he had an agenda. He was set to steal another innocence, to ruin another girl’s life.”

You get a glimpse at Hardin’s thoughts raw when all this starts. If you ever thought you would find a struggling boy attempting to keep up the bad boy ruse, but was really sweet and wholesome inside then you are in for a shock, because he is not that at all. He is Hardin; he is cruel and cynical, tortured and miserable, there is no sweet boy hiding behind the mask.

This to me was refreshing, because I think I would have been disappointed if he was, his cruelty is a reflection of his life and not a persona he was playing out just to be cool. His pain is real, and his need to cause pain in others was too.

In AFTER of course we see how much anger he had towards Ken, his alcoholic father who left him when he was a boy and who he blames for everything that went wrong for him and his mother. But we get only the little Hardin tells Tessa. In BEFORE we really see the deep resentment and hatred he feels for this man and you can't help but just break at the thought of all the damage it caused in Hardin emotionally. The retelling of the china breaking chapter in AFTER was one of the hardest ones to read, his pain was on the surface. 

"Someone or something other than me has always had Ken Scott. The scotch, the bars, Karen, Landon, this big house. He spreads himself so thin, yet had no room for me in his life until the last year and he thinks I'm just going to be okay with that shit? No fucking way."

More than anything else for me it was important to see how he handled being in love with Tessa, when I went into this book of course I already knew how things went down, but I really wanted to see the turmoil in him, I wanted to see his shell crack when he realized that it was no longer about the bet that he was truly falling hard for her. I also wanted to see the coldness in him when he chose to go down the path of ruining another life again.

Hardin's head is like hell, no... really. Between the self loathing, the not giving a damn and fighting loving Tessa it really is exhausting. I wasn't surprised to see that even when he knew what he was about to say would pierce through Tessa he just couldn't help it, I think that, as messed up as it was, being so awful and mean to others, specially Tessa, ultimately was like therapy, the only way he could function.  

This is what I love about this story though, it gives us a dose of what people are really like. We are mean to others sometimes when we are hurting, and we stick around when people are mean to us because we love them. Sometimes things are just too much and we walk away, but what is clear though is that relationships are not always puppies and rainbows specially when people are damaged by life. 

Hardin's point of view is hot! Super hot. I think, now that I know what he was thinking, that a lot of Tessa's appeal at least at the beginning, was the fact that she was so innocent and that he could claim so many of her firsts, and being the selfish jerk that he was he just couldn't resist. 

One of my favorite parts was the chapter when he wins the bet, not because it's hot (though it is very hot) but because being in his brain while all of this is happening gave me the hope in him that I don't think I had when I read AFTER, he was in love with her but felt panic and fear at being caught, at her realizing what a rotten person he was, at losing her forever. His anguish was also mine while it was all going down. 

"The guilt I've been holding on to since I grew to love her is flowing through me. I'm battling within myself: the good boy who loves the good girl and the bad boy who's too broken to love anyone are fighting with swords. Each one wants something different from the princess."

Hardin and Tessa are one of my favorite couples in literature and I think they will always be. They pissed me off, they made me laugh, they made me cry soooooooooo much, but yet every day that passes since I finished reading their story I miss them as if they were real.
We see them grow and learn, fall in love and feel pain and then we see them live a life that was no easy task to get to, but yet filled my heart with joy.

I many times wondered if they were really meant to be with each other, and while I doubted it time and time again, in the end I think they were perfect for each other from the very beginning. 

"A small, soft voice in my head reminds me that maybe, just maybe, she was sent here for the opposite reason. Maybe I'm meant to be with her, to show her a new perspective on life?"

Just as heart wrenching as the first time I met Tessa and Hardin, BEFORE brought me back to one year ago when my heart was breaking while following their love story, and now I don't know what to do with myself.
So once I again I say "Well played Anna, well played!" 

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ANNA TODD is a first-time writer spending her days in the Austin area with her husband, with whom she beat half the statistics by getting married one month after graduating high school. Between her husband's three deployments to Iraq, she worked odd jobs from a makeup counter to the IRS processing counter. Anna was always an avid reader and boy band and romance lover, so now that she’s found a way to combine the three she’s enjoying living a real-life dream come true.