In Kelley Armstrong’s newest novel, one of the most difficult parts of a school shooting is the AFTERMATH.

Skye was blindsided. Her lovable brother, Luka, and two of his friends gunned down multiple students at their school. Luka never officially pulled the trigger on anyone, but he was still seen as guilty–and was fatally shot by police. To make matters worse, one of the victims of the tragedy was Skye’s best friend, Jesse’s, brother. Everything fell apart. Skye knew Jesse could never forgive her for what her brother did. Everyone in Riverside had their eyes on Skye’s family. It was time to go somewhere else, start anew. But Skye’s dad left the family almost immediately after the shooting. Her mom’s depression only got worse. For three years, Skye lived away, and wanted so badly to pretend the past never happened.

But then, Skye’s grandma had a (second) stroke. Without her (grand)parental supervision and with Skye’s mom barely able to function, Child Services stepped in. Skye was placed under the care of her Aunt Mae, who still lives in Riverside. Skye headed back to school and reunited with many of her former classmates. Their “welcoming” was more like a banishing. Skye got the whispers, the stares, and the outright hateful comments. But the worst was finding out that Jesse was a student there, when Skye had heard he went to high school elsewhere.

I’m a “plot person” when it comes to reading novels. I like it to roll on quick and smooth. Aftermath is not written in such a fashion. However, I found myself completely engrossed by the story. There were so many possibilities, and I couldn’t wait to find out where Kelley Armstrong was taking these characters. She (purposefully) misled me a few times, and I was grateful for the winding path.

Skye and Jesse’s relationship really hooked me. Not solely because it could’ve possibly turned romantic–in fact, the opposite. Could they ever find what they once were? What exactly did they used to be? Could they become more than friends? Were they already more than friends? And who were they three years later? Who will they turn out to be? I sympathized with both characters, and a big part of why was because of the dual narration Armstrong utilized. The reader gets chapters about Skye that are written in first-person and chapters of Jesse that are written in third-person. (That writing decision, alone, was a bold choice that worked out very well.)

RATING: 4.5 OUT OF 5 STARS

Aftermath is on shelves now! You can order your copy from Amazon.

Three years after losing her brother Luka in a school shooting, Skye Gilchrist is moving home. But there’s no sympathy for Skye and her family because Luka wasn’t a victim; he was a shooter.

Jesse Mandal knows all too well that the scars of the past don’t heal easily. The shooting cost Jesse his brother and his best friend–Skye.

Ripped apart by tragedy, Jesse and Skye can’t resist reopening the mysteries of their past. But old wounds hide darker secrets. And the closer Skye and Jesse get to the truth of what happened that day, the closer they get to a new killer.