Surviving was just the beginning.

Eleven years after a shooting rocked the small town of East Ridge, New Jersey and left eighteen first graders in their classroom dead, survivors and recent high school graduates Matt Simpson and Cole Hewitt are still navigating their guilt and trying to move beyond the shadow of their town's grief. Will Cole and Matt ever be able to truly leave the ghosts of East Ridge behind? Do they even want to?

As they grapple with changing relationships, falling in love, and growing apart, these two friends must face the question of how to move on—and truly begin living.




This novel was a different kind of heartbreaking than I expected. Every Moment After is filled with many emotionally charged moments; underlying beneath the story of survival and moving on, is one of coming of age. It is, of course, a timely release and one that will speak to its target audience in various ways.

Joseph Moldover doesn't take actual events and cheapen them by dramatizing and fictionalizing them. Instead, he takes on the very real grief of surviving something so traumatizing. This isn't something that was haphazardly thrown together to create something relevant--it is something that is relevant to the times we are living in.

While many readers might see this novel as another fictional school shooting, the events at hand are connected to the aftermath only. Every Moment After fits as a name because it deals primarily with everything that comes after. The bonds that are made or complicated. All the classic coming of age honesty, with a tragic center as the before.

And honestly, this makes it all the more powerful.

Every Moment After deals with the many emotions that come with survivor's guilt, with living through something so horrible at such a young age, and provides an image of how to keep moving. There wasn't a better time for a novel with such a topic be released.

This is definitely one of the most moving YA releases of 2019 and should be at the top of your reading list. No matter your age.