Contemporary Authors

• After the Fall ( young adult novel) Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (New York, NY), 2017

1. After the fall LCCN 2016028790 Type of material Book Personal name Hart, Kate, 1980- author. Main title After the fall / Kate Hart. Published/Produced New York : Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2017. Projected pub date 1111 Description pages cm ISBN 9780374302696 (hardback) Links Cover image http://www.netread.com/jcusers2/bk1388/696/9780374302696/image/lgcover.9780374302696.jpg CALL NUMBER PZ7.1.H3758 Aft 2017 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

• Kate Hart Home Page - http://www.katehart.net/p/about-me.html

  about

  Kate Hart 1:43 PM
  the basics

  headshot of Kate Hart After studying Spanish and history at a small liberal arts school, Kate Hart taught young people their ABCs, wrote grants for grownups with disabilities, and now builds treehouses for people of all ages. Her debut YA novel, AFTER THE FALL, was published January 2017 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. She also contributes to YA Highway, hosts the Badass Ladies You Should Know series, and sells jewelry, woodworking, and inappropriate embroidery at The Badasserie. A citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, she lives with her family in Northwest Arkansas.

  Kate Hart is the author of AFTER THE FALL, a YA novel coming January 24, 2017 from FSG. She is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, and owns a treehouse-building business in northwest Arkansas, where she resides with her family.
  super short bio
  Born in Oklahoma, Kate attended most of elementary school in St. Charles, Missouri, and moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas for junior high and high school. After graduating summa cum laude from Hendrix College at the top of both the history and Spanish departments, she went straight to Vanderbilt's Latin American Studies masters program on a fellowship... and burned out almost immediately. She left to become a teacher, and moved back to Fayetteville, where she later became a grant writer and graphic designer for a nonprofit serving disabled adults while making half-hearted attempts at degrees in both public administration and university leadership.

  But luckily, inspiration struck -- twice. In 2009, Kate rediscovered her love of creative writing, and successfully completed her first attempt at a novel. She began to research publishing, and signed with a literary agent in 2010. That same year, she and her spouse had trouble finding a decent playset to give their children for Christmas. When the kids found out their gift ultimately came from Craigslist, they suggested that all playsets could be recycled. The idea took root, and that summer Kate and her spouse quit their jobs to create Natural State Treehouses, building play structures and more from locally-sourced and natural materials.

  Kate was a contributor to YA Highway, where she wrote the popular Field Trip Friday feature for five years and developed the Publishing Road Map. Kate also received widespread recognition for her infographics assessing diversity representation on YA book covers, garnering coverage in The New Yorker, Jezebel, The Huffington Post, and School Library Journal. She currently hosts the Badass Ladies You Should Know series and writes a general interest newsletter called “Shine Along.” Her debut novel, After the Fall, was published January 24, 2017 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and received a starred review from VOYA.

  Kate spends her spare time hiking and traveling with her family and their dog Norbert (named for the dragon in Harry Potter). She also enjoys fiber arts and woodworking, which she sells at TheBadasserie.net. A proud citizen of the Chickasaw Nation with Choctaw heritage, she lives in northwest Arkansas.

• YA Interrobang - http://www.yainterrobang.com/after-the-fall-kate-hart/

  Shiny Ladders and Feminism: Kate Hart talks AFTER THE FALL 0
  BY SARAH CARTER ON MARCH 20, 2017 CONTEMPORARY, FEATURES
  I consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable when it comes to issues involving social justice. That hasn’t always been the case. As a teenager, there was a lot I didn’t know and many opinions I held that I now rebuke. Kate Hart’s After the Fall deals with that tricky period between knowing and not, that many of us tend to forget we went through. If you’re looking for an immersive contemporary that captures the messy necessity of that very period, this is the book for you.

  In After the Fall, Raychel is sleeping with two boys: her overachieving best friend Matt… and his slacker brother, Andrew. Matt doesn’t even seem to realize she’s a girl, except when he decides she needs rescuing. But Raychel doesn’t want to be his girl anyway. She just needs his support as she deals with the classmate who assaulted her, the constant threat of her family’s eviction, and the dream of college slipping quickly out of reach. Matt tries to help, but he doesn’t really get it… and he’d never understand why she’s fallen into a secret relationship with his brother. The friendships are a precarious balance, and when tragedy strikes, everything falls apart. Raychel has to decide which pieces she can pick up – and which ones are worth putting back together.

  After the Fall is available now. For more, visit Hart’s website or follow her on Twitter.

  I’d love to hear about the process of getting the words for After the Fall on the page. Did you writing happen in a cafe? A library? At home and squeezed between work? Pantser or planner?
  I wrote the first draft of this book in six weeks… almost seven years ago. There have been a lot of rewrites and revisions since then, which took place almost entirely at home between freelance jobs, family business duties, and writing other manuscripts. However, the book’s biggest revision was finished on a camping trip, where the lack of wifi was helpful until it came time to email the draft to my editor. I ended up sending it from a Lowe’s parking lot in Oklahoma.

  In the beginning of After the Fall , your characters are not educated on matters such as sexual assault. As the novel progresses, the reader witnesses an education in action, with the characters expanding their worldview on assault, how to be a ‘good guy,’ and what consent means. What drove you to write the story of teens evolving in such a way, rather than one where on page-one they know these things?
  By the time I rewrote After the Fall in 2013, rape culture terminology was entering the mainstream, and I had done some supplementary research (and spent a lot of time on Tumblr). But when I wrote the first draft in 2010, I was trying to articulate the ideas to myself without a solid vocabulary on the topic – and that was at age thirty. I certainly didn’t have a framework to process assault when it happened to me in high school. So the characters’ evolving understanding was a natural development of my own, just sped up a few decades.

  One of the perspectives in After the Fall is that of Matt, who is well-intentioned but not necessarily adept at bring those intentions into fruition. At times, his personality touches on the ‘nice guy’ who wants to respect women, while avoiding the actual application of consent. Can you speak to why you found it important to include the perspective of a character on the ‘other side’ who struggled with the application of feminist ideas?
  I think this is a trap we all fall into, whether with sexism or racism or homophobia or any other prejudice our society ingrains in us. It’s easy to spout ideals, but it’s harder to see where you yourself are perpetuating the very things you abhor. Matt’s attitudes are shared by people of all genders, and I think his POV reminds the reader that even “good” feminists find themselves slut shaming and second guessing assault stories when that alternative benefits us and our worldview.

  Even “good” feminists find themselves slut shaming and second guessing assault stories.
  CLICK TO TWEET

  As a low-income assault survivor yourself, what would you hope a young reader who has also survived assault would ultimately take away from After the Fall?
  Well, to be honest, by the time I was in high school, my family had reached middle class, so I don’t want to claim to speak for folks who grew up in actual poverty. But there were certainly times as a kid when my mom had to borrow toilet paper from the neighbors so we could make it to pay day. Growing up with financial uncertainty gave me a chip on my shoulder that I’ve never lost, which has been both a burden and a blessing. It’s made me work harder. But sometimes you can’t help resenting the extra work, especially when people are constantly telling you how grateful you should be to have the work at all.

  My self-worth has always been tied up in that work and perceptions of its success, which are unavoidably also tied up in money, and adding assault to the mix made it almost impossible for me to see my own value for a long time. So I guess my hope is that readers who identify with Raychel will come away a little more convinced that they alone determine their own worth – and that they’re worthy of any opportunities that come their way, even if those opportunities don’t take the shape they’re hoping for. You don’t need the shiniest ladder out of a bad situation, you just need a solid one pointing in the right direction, and the will to climb it.

• Google Play - https://play.google.com/books/article/mkogbnlzae/kate-hart

  Kate Hart on Evoking Small-Town Life and a Complicated Friendship in After the Fall
  “You can’t write a place, because every place is different to everybody.”
  Written by
  Zan Romanoff
  Published
  1/24/2017
  Kate Hart’s debut novel, After the Fall, is a book about the everyday experience of survival: her characters struggle with questions ranging from how to recover from unrequited crushes to how to recover from sexual assault, tackling concerns about where to go to college alongside fears of eviction from their family homes.
  The novel is co-narrated by a pair of best friends, Matt and Raychel, both seniors at a public high school in fictional Big Springs, Arkansas—a university city not unlike Hart’s hometown of Fayetteville. As the story unfolds, the reader gets to witness how one series of events affects two different lives, from two different perspectives. The friction between Matt and Raychel, seen from both sides, offers a nuanced depiction of small-scale misunderstandings between men and women, creating not just a portrait of the specifics of small-town life and gender politics but also an intimate look at the ways that rape culture informs and permeates even our best intentions, and how it can mess with our closest relationships.
  After the Fall
  After the Fall
  Kate Hart
  So how did After the Fall come to you as a story?
  Kate Hart: I had seen somebody suggest, “just write an I want list.” So I sat down with my notebook one night, in bed, and I started writing: “I want to write a story about hiking, and trying to keep up with the boys, and feeling like you’re less-than. And then feeling bad because you feel like you’re less-than.” So that was how I started. The first line of the book is still basically the same: being up on a rock and being like, Oh. They can see up my shorts.
  When you were writing, did the two voices come to you at the same time? Was there ever a feeling of difficulty with writing from a male point of view?
  KH: I was definitely one of those girls, even into adulthood, who was a not-one-of-“those girls” girl. So when I first started writing, I fancied myself better at the male voice, and part of why Matt was in there is because I was insecure about Raychel.
  But you’ve since called Matt “the voice of the patriarchy”—so did you end up feeling differently about that, ultimately?
  KH: At first I really felt for both of them, and then [when it went out on submission to editors] I started getting rejections that said, “I don’t really care about Raychel; I just want to hear Matt’s story,” or, “Raychel’s really grating but I really like Matt’s voice.” That was when I started to get very, like, No, guys! Matt’s kind of an ass, actually! Like, either y’all aren’t paying attention or I did this wrong.
  And so in revisions, it wasn’t that I started to dislike Matt, but it was easier to let him be wrong. And to realize that even I, in writing this book, had made him into this knight in shining armor figure, even though that’s what [Raychel] is railing against. I had still done it!
  It’s so amazing what shows up in your writing that leaves you thinking, “Damn. I thought I had undone that!”
  KH: “I meant the opposite of this!”
  Yeah, it’s really incredible. Can you talk a little bit about misunderstanding in the book? And how you thought about that—or if you thought about that—as a theme.
  KH: That was another thing, when I started to get editorial feedback, that a lot of people didn’t like. “Why don’t they just talk to each other?” I realize that that can be a really boring trope. Then on the other hand, teenagers don’t talk to each other! My dude best friend in high school, who’s still my best friend—I didn’t tell him I was assaulted. He was on the team with that dude! It was hard to strike that balance between “is this crappy writing?” and the reality [that teenagers] misunderstand each other, and that’s how everybody goes through life.
  I’m curious about how you feel about talking about your assault in terms of talking about After the Fall. To what extent you want your story to be part of its story, and to what extent you’re like, “This is actually none of your business.”
  KH: That’s really tough to navigate, because I still live in my hometown. I feel like I can’t discuss details of it because [people’s] memories are too long, you know? You never know who you’re going to see at the grocery store. And then there’s also the risk that people think Raychel is me, which is clearly not the case.
  I don’t want to appropriate #ownvoices to apply to sexual assault, because I don’t think that’s how it’s intended, but I do think there’s a value in these stories being told by survivors. And so I want that to be clear, while also making clear that this isn’t my exact story, you know? That really delicate balance of: this is an informed story, but it’s not my story.
  Speaking of which, you’ve said that Big Springs is a lot like Fayetteville, where you went to high school, and where you live now. Can you talk about writing characters who live in relative poverty and in a relatively rural place, and what that meant to you?
  KH: When I first wrote it, it didn’t stand out to me as unusual. I had read a fair amount of YA, but it was only later, after I had really been in the industry for a while, that I was like, “Oh, I kind of did something unusual here.” That was another thing that editors didn’t seem to understand, and I would get a lot of pushback: “Why does her mom smoke?” “Why do you keep calling it Dr. Thunder instead of Dr. Pepper?” Just the very basic things that, if you’ve always had money, you don’t know. “Why does she keep making jokes about being poor?” That’s what you do! You eat broke food and you joke about it. How else do you survive?
  One of the things I also really love is that when Raychel talks about staying in Big Springs for college, she’s very matter-of-fact about it. There’s no, “Oh, if I don’t escape this small town, I will have failed. I’ll die.”
  KH: One of the main tensions in my friend group, growing up, was: are you gonna stay [in Fayetteville] for college or not? It was a very judge-y thing. My husband and I stayed in-state, but we went to a liberal arts school, and so that was okay, but it wasn’t the same as going to the Coast. And we actually had a teacher tell us she was disappointed in us because we didn’t leave the state. But I wanted to go where I could afford.
  How do you feel your reception in publishing has been, as a non-coastal person, a person without an MFA?
  KH: It was weird, because the first couple years it felt fine, to be honest. Molly O’Neill put out some kind of prompt, and I wrote a blog post that basically said, “I’m worried that no one in New York will take me seriously because I say ‘y’all’ in all seriousness.” I’m plenty smart but I say “fixin’ to.” And she was very encouraging. So I had several people along the way who were like, “Don’t let that get to you.”
  And it wasn’t until later in the process that it started to feel like a thing. Realizing some of it is like, the making of connections. You know, I can’t just pick up and go to a publishing event. Doubly so if you don’t have the money. So I’ve been more aware of that since I’ve gotten further into the process. It never felt like something that was going to keep me from getting published. It feels like a handicap on me, like if you want to level up. And you know, sometimes I don’t care and I don’t even want to level up.
  But there were definitely weird times in the editorial process. Things that seemed very simple to me weren’t obvious at all. The characters are at a music festival and I’m describing: there’s kids in combat boots, and kids in tie-dye with white-boy dreadlocks, and kids in Carhartts and camo. And someone was like, “Why are they wearing camo?” Well, everybody wears camo. You know? Just those little things that were like, “really?” Okay, well, um, here’s a link to Bass Pro Shop.
  I’m like, this is like such a small cultural issue it doesn’t feel worth complaining about. But it is there, some. So often I read [books set in the South] and I’m like, where do these people live? Like, literally on the set of Gone With the Wind?
  Right, and that’s why it’s so useful to have a multiplicity of voices, and to have people writing specifically—not just like, This is a book “about the South,” but This is a book about a university town in the northwest of the South.
  KH: You can’t write a place, because every place is different to everybody.
  And writing is not your only creative pursuit! You make so much other stuff.
  KH: Yeah. If it won’t work in words I’ll put it in wood, or thread, or something else. I want to call myself an artist, but I’m not entirely comfortable with it, because of the age-old craft versus art thing. I’ve always been super crafty. Pretty much anything I see I’m like, I can make that. However, Can I make it well? remains to be seen. I’ve had a real hang-up about that: all of my art had to be functional and useful for a while. And I had to let myself go from that. It can just be for fun. I can just enjoy it.
  Do you think writing helped with that?
  KH: It took a really long time for me to sell [my book], and in the meantime I’ve done a lot of work from home and freelance [writing]. And I’ve found that working hourly messed up my brain: any minute I wasn’t working, it felt like I was slacking. So I don’t think writing helps with that so much as I’ve developed this in reaction to the writing. Like, it’s okay to not be constantly pushing forward on career and trying to make money and trying to make word count, you know? It’s okay to just sit down and, like, sew the word boobs on something.
  Zan Romanoff is the author two novels, A Song to Take the World Apart and Grace and the Fever, both from Knopf Books for Young Readers. She lives and writes in Los Angeles.

• Operation Awesome - https://operationawesome6.blogspot.com/2017/01/meet-kate-hart-in-this-debut-author.html?showComment=1485452451583#c3867321994387083

  Wednesday, January 25, 2017
  Meet Kate Hart in this Debut Author Spotlight
  Debut Author Spotlight from @JLenniDorner on @OpAwesome6

  J Lenni Dorner of the Lenni-Lenape tribe welcomes Kate Hart of the Chickasaw Nation to this Debut Author Spotlight.

  1- Where did you learn to do embroidery?

  My mom taught me cross stitch, and my grandmothers taught me how to crazy quilt. I figured out the rest from there on my own.

  2- How will you measure your publishing performance?

  My only measurement of success is
  a) did I write to the best of my ability and
  b) did I execute edits to the best of my ability.
  Everything else it out of my control, so I'm making a concentrated effort not to focus on it while I try to write a follow up book.

  3- What ignited your passion for writing?

  I honestly don’t know. I always aspired to be a writer as a kid, and read like the library was on fire. My ambitions changed as I grew up, but I always knew in the back of my head that I was a writer at heart.

  4- How has being from of the Chickasaw Nation impacted your life?

  Growing up, I just knew that we were Chickasaw and Choctaw, but didn’t have much idea of what that meant. My immediate family is estranged from the relatives in that line, so I’ve had to build my knowledge through research (good thing I majored in history!) It’s a struggle to figure out what I’m “allowed” to claim as mine in the present, so rebuilding our story and how we got here is the route I’ve taken so far.

  5- Can you share a picture of a treehouse you built?

  I mostly do marketing tasks for the business, but I did help to put the floor in this one.

  I’ve also been using leftover scrap wood to make jewelry to sell in my Etsy store (http://thebadasserie.net ).

  6- Do you have a fun story to share with us that illustrates a time when a benefit of being a published author came to light for you?

  I accompanied some friends to the LA Times Festival of Books one year, and happened to be hanging out in the Green Room when Billy Idol and LeVar Burton walked by. I didn’t embarrass myself but I didn’t exactly keep my cool, either.

  Follow up question! Did seeing LeVar Burton cause a "Reading Rainbow" flashback?

  I had actually just seen him speak at my local library a few months prior, so I was mostly trying to gauge "Can I approach him and thank him for all he's done?" (The answer was definitely "No, be cool, Hart.")

  7- Who is currently your biggest fan? What does that person love most (or "ship") about your debut novel?

  My friend Jennica Schwartzman, who’s an actress and producer, has been a huge supporter of the novel – she even included it in her last movie. I know she likes the setting a lot (it’s based on my hometown, where her husband Ryan and I became friends in junior high), but she’s also had kind words to say about the ways it explores different kinds of feminism and what consent really means.

  8- What was the first concert you attended?

  My poor mom took my sister and me to see New Kids On The Block in the late 80s. The first concert I got to attend on my own was Pearl Jam in 1993, right after Vs. came out – my best friend won tickets from a radio station, and it was definitely a formative experience of our young adulthood.

  9- What emotions do you hope your book will evoke for the reader, and is there a particular scene you hope will resonate with readers?

  I don’t care about emotions so much as making people think, but I hope that the final scene leaves people feeling like there’s hope even life’s most heartbreaking moments.

  10- What is the most memorable trait or visual oddity of one of your characters?

  I had a lot of fun coming up with weird things for Trenton Alexander Montgomery the Third to say. He was a character who appeared in the novel’s rewrite and he definitely added some much needed levity to the story.

  11- #DiversityBingo2017 What's your favorite book that covers a square on the card?

  MC of color in SFF: Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
  I had a hard time finishing any books in 2016, but I raced through this one in a single evening. Indigenous! Latinx! Vampires!

  12- Which character has your favorite Personality Contradiction?

  Andrew’s combination of slacker + secretly smart and sensitive dude is probably my favorite.

  13- As a reader, what most motivates you to buy a new book to read?

  Word of mouth. When multiple people whose opinions I trust recommend it, I know it has to go on my TBR.

  14- How did you come up with the character name/ spelling for Raychel?

  I actually have a friend named Raychel, and at some point when I was looking at her name, “Raychel with a why” popped into my head. That turned into “Raychel with no why,” which became a line in the manuscript… which later got deleted because it was too melodramatic. But the name stuck.

  15- What is one discussion topic which you would like the readers of this interview to remark on in the comments?

  I want to hear everyone’s first concerts!

  16- Anything else you would care to share about your book and yourself?

  Kate Hart is the author of AFTER THE FALL, a YA novel coming January 24, 2017 from FSG. She is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, and owns a treehouse-building business in northwest Arkansas, where she resides with her family.

  http://katehart.net
  https://twitter.com/kate_hart
  http://instagram.com/katehart226
  http://kdhart.tumblr.com
  snapchat: katehart226

  AFTER THE FALL:

  “Seventeen-year-old Raychel is sleeping with two boys: her overachieving best friend Matt…and his slacker brother, Andrew. Raychel sneaks into Matt’s bed after nightmares, but nothing ever happens. He doesn’t even seem to realize she’s a girl, except when he decides she needs rescuing. But Raychel doesn't want to be his girl anyway. She just needs his support as she deals with the classmate who assaulted her, the constant threat of her family’s eviction, and the dream of college slipping quickly out of reach. Matt tries to help, but he doesn’t really get it… and he’d never understand why she’s fallen into a secret relationship with his brother.
  The friendships are a precarious balance, and when tragedy strikes, everything falls apart. Raychel has to decide which pieces she can pick up – and which ones are worth putting back together.”

Hart, Kate. After the Fall
Jonathan Ryder and Elizabeth Sullivan
Voice of Youth Advocates.
39.5 (Dec. 2016): p61.
COPYRIGHT 2016 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
http://www.voya.com
Full Text:
5Q * 4P * J * S (A)
Hart, Kate. After the Fall. Farrar Straus Giroux/Macmillan, 2016. 336p. $17.99. 9780-374-30269-6.
Raychel and Matt are long time best friends, inseparable since they were very young. Raychel lives with her single
mother, and has the threat of financial disaster constantly over her head. She hopes to escape this small town, and uses
her sexuality as a shield against the outside world. Matt is the older son of a wealthy family whose future is wide open.
He lives a classic "good guy" life of student counsel, soccer, and countless volunteer hours. Secretly, he wishes that he
and Raychel could be more than just best friends. All of this changes when Raychel becomes increasingly drawn to
Matt's younger brother, Andrew. As Raychel and Andrew grow closer, the tensions between her and Matt increase.
Then ... two unspeakable events happen, and those who are left behind are forced to pick up the pieces of their
shattered lives.
This memorable debut novel is told in the alternating perspectives of Raychel and Matt. Both characters are very well
portrayed as complex characters with strengths and weaknesses. The supporting cast is also well developed, with most
characters avoiding the trap of falling into mere stereotypes. The story is well paced, flowing logically towards its
conclusion. The ending ties up most issues, but leaves enough open so that the reader knows the characters are going to
move on. This book deals with heavy issues concerning sexuality and grief, and as such might be difficult for some
readers. Issues of jealousy, relationships, sexual consent, and grief run throughout. This would be an excellent addition
to most high school libraries.--Jonathan Ryder.
The encouragement of drug use, alcoholism, sexual promiscuity, and foul language among teens is disheartening, as is
the lack of character development and likeable characters. The plot, the characters, the structure-- none of these will
compel readers to pick up this book. 2Q, 2P.--Elizabeth Sullivan, Teen Reviewer.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Ryder, Jonathan, and Elizabeth Sullivan. "Hart, Kate. After the Fall." Voice of Youth Advocates, Dec. 2016, p. 61.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA474767930&it=r&asid=b7b15eb6d39fa813c64f85a9b09b9474.
Accessed 9 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A474767930
7/9/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1499637250481 2/5
After the Fall
Diane Colson
Booklist.
113.6 (Nov. 15, 2016): p49.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
After the Fall. By Kate Hart. Jan. 2017. 336p. Farrar, $17.99 (9780374302696). Gr. 9-12.
Matt is always there for Raychel. He's the kind of best friend who carries her on his back for three miles after she twists
her ankle. But Matt only sees the parts of Raychel that he wants to see, unlike Matt's brother, Andrew. Fun-loving
Andrew is the perfect counterpart to responsible Matt, and when sparks of attraction fly between Raychel and Andrew,
Raychel instinctively tries to hide them from Matt. This choice, along with Matt's inability to see the truth, leads to a
terrible tragedy, and Raychel and Matt have to learn how to pick up the pieces of their lives and move on. Hart's
poignant debut novel unfolds slowly, alternating between Raychel and Matt's points of view, which allows readers to
experience their respective emotional journeys. Thought-provoking moments regarding such issues as female sexuality,
racial microaggressions, and class differences add depth to the characters. Recommend to fans of character-driven
novels such as Sara Zarr's How to Save a Life (2011) or Jennifer Niven's All the Bright Places (2015).--Diane Colson
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Colson, Diane. "After the Fall." Booklist, 15 Nov. 2016, p. 49. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA473788310&it=r&asid=3f9122fd25bf6219bd320c0bbc352475.
Accessed 9 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A473788310
7/9/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1499637250481 3/5
After the Fall
Publishers Weekly.
263.45 (Nov. 7, 2016): p63.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
After the Fall
Kate Hart. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $17.99 (288p) ISBN 978-0-374-30269-6
High school seniors Raychel and Matt have been best friends forever, and any day now, Matt is going to tell her that he
loves her. But while he's dawdling, his younger brother, Andrew--the designated screw-up to Matt's responsible A
student--makes his move. In addition to the questions of brotherly rivalry, secrecy, and family dynamics introduced by
this turn of events, Raychel is also struggling with a nonconsensual sexual encounter and worrying about her future,
since there's no money for college. Hart's debut novel has a lot going for it--well-defined and believable major and
minor characters, in particular--as well as a lot going on. The book takes up consent, slut shaming, issues of class and
(to a lesser extent) race, unrequited love, and competition between siblings--and then adds a tragic accident and the
resulting guilt and fractures. Although it can feel overloaded as a result, Hart holds it all together and closes with an
ending that retains a measure of hope without becoming unrealistically perfect. Ages 14--up. Agent: Adriann Ranta,
Foundry Literary + Media. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"After the Fall." Publishers Weekly, 7 Nov. 2016, p. 63. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA469757570&it=r&asid=b33b239be9523efba15ab78f0fbf98b2.
Accessed 9 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A469757570
7/9/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1499637250481 4/5
Hart, Kate: AFTER THE FALL
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Hart, Kate AFTER THE FALL Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Children's Fiction) $17.99 1, 24 ISBN: 978-0-374-30269-6
Unrequited love and family tragedy destroy Matt and Raychel's friendship.Raychel's childhood friendship with Matt
slowly evolves until by their senior year, she's been nearly adopted by his family. But Matt's narration reveals that he
already considers Raychel "his girl" and believes that declaring his feelings will inevitably lead to romance. However,
he's also clearly bothered by Raychel's drinking, party hookups, and acceptance that she may have to attend an
inexpensive local college rather than one near his own first choice. Soon his interactions with her seem almost
Pygmalion-esque. Raychel senses that Matt's attitude of superiority sometimes stems from his wealthy, white
background, whereas she's "poor white trash from the Delta," so it's not entirely surprising when his less-judgmental
younger brother, Andrew, ends up successfully romancing Raychel. Her relationship with both brothers is derailed
when they misinterpret white classmate Carson's sexual assault of Raychel at a party as consensual. Over the course of
the novel, Raychel's interactions with Carson raise important questions about what it means to consent to sexual
activity, though the provided answers lack nuance. In similar fashion, the exploration of race posed by Indian-American
friend Asha's romance with African-American Spencer doesn't go as far as it could. Eventually a buildup of
communication breakdowns leads to tragedy. The novel introduces many complicated topics--from sexual assault to
issues of class and race--but fails to address them thoroughly. (Fiction. 14-18)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Hart, Kate: AFTER THE FALL." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466329262&it=r&asid=b6df043b9fed601a6701940290e912d9.
Accessed 9 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A466329262
7/9/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1499637250481 5/5
Hart, Kate. After the Fall
Marlyn Beebe
School Library Journal.
62.12 (Dec. 2016): p120.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
HART, Kate. After the Fall. 336p. Farrar. Jan. 2017. Tr $24.99. ISBN 9780374302696.
Gr 9 Up--Seventeen-year-old Raychel describes herself as "poor white trash from the Delta," while her best friend,
Matt, is the son of a physician and a university professor. They've been friends for so long that Raychel is an unofficial
member of Matt's family. Matt has a secret crush on Raychel, but he doesn't act on it, because Raychel has a strict
policy of not dating high school boys. So he's surprised when he hears a rumor that Raychel has "hooked up" with
Carson Tipton, star of the school baseball team. Matt knows that Raychel often drinks too much at parties, but he's
shocked that she'd break her own mle with Carson, of all people. Raychel was chatting with Carson at a local frat party,
and when he asked her to continue their conversation outside while he had a smoke, she agreed. But does that mean
that she agreed to perform fellatio on him? She feels confused and guilty and is unable to talk with Matt about her
experience. At first, this title seems like a well-written examination of the definitions of assault and consent. But as a
relationship blossoms between Raychel and Matt's brother, Andrew, questions about communication and honesty
emerge even more strongly, and after a family tragedy, grief and guilt are also brought into tire mix. Those are some
pretty heavy themes for one book to explore, but Hart does a good job of handling her ambitious plot. VERDICT Like
Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak and Courtney Summers's All the Rage, this is an important novel for teens and adults to
discuss together.--Marlyn Beebe, Long Beach Public Library, CA
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Beebe, Marlyn. "Hart, Kate. After the Fall." School Library Journal, Dec. 2016, p. 120. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA472370679&it=r&asid=5551277f674245c346c9acdd69461d57.
Accessed 9 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A472370679

Ryder, Jonathan, and Elizabeth Sullivan. "Hart, Kate. After the Fall." Voice of Youth Advocates, Dec. 2016, p. 61. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA474767930&it=r. Accessed 9 July 2017. Colson, Diane. "After the Fall." Booklist, 15 Nov. 2016, p. 49. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA473788310&it=r. Accessed 9 July 2017. "After the Fall." Publishers Weekly, 7 Nov. 2016, p. 63. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA469757570&it=r. Accessed 9 July 2017. "Hart, Kate: AFTER THE FALL." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466329262&it=r. Accessed 9 July 2017. Beebe, Marlyn. "Hart, Kate. After the Fall." School Library Journal, Dec. 2016, p. 120. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA472370679&it=r. Accessed 9 July 2017.

• Nerd Problems
  http://www.nerdprobs.com/books/book-review-after-the-fall-by-kate-hart/
  Word count: 677

  BOOK REVIEW: After the Fall by Kate Hart
  Kristin Downer January 13, 2017 Blog, Book Reviews, Books Leave a comment

  Title: After the Fall
  Author: Kate Hart
  Publication: January 24, 2017
  Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  Genre: Young Adult
  Pages: 336

  SYNOPSIS: (From Goodreads)

  A YA debut about a teen girl who wrestles with rumors, reputation, and her relationships with two brothers.

  Seventeen-year-old Raychel is sleeping with two boys: her overachieving best friend Matt…and his slacker brother, Andrew. Raychel sneaks into Matt’s bed after nightmares, but nothing ever happens. He doesn’t even seem to realize she’s a girl, except when he decides she needs rescuing. But Raychel doesn’t want to be his girl anyway. She just needs his support as she deals with the classmate who assaulted her, the constant threat of her family’s eviction, and the dream of college slipping quickly out of reach. Matt tries to help, but he doesn’t really get it… and he’d never understand why she’s fallen into a secret relationship with his brother. The friendships are a precarious balance, and when tragedy strikes, everything falls apart. Raychel has to decide which pieces she can pick up – and which ones are worth putting back together.

  REVIEW:

  **A copy of this book was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.**

  An honest start to this review would be to say that the cover drew me in far more than the description. It looks interesting. What was this girl doing on a cliff? What fall is the title referring to? It looks so peaceful. So starting to read i automatically realized that author Kate Hart had a great writing style. The story flowed nicely and had a lot of realistic nuances, behaviors, and personalities that you would see in typical teenagers. After the Fall follows Raychel as she navigates a love triangle, frienships, and tragedy.

  While I enjoyed the style writing and the flow of the story, I found the main point of the story that was teased in the synopsis and in the title of the book took a long time to get to. I felt a majority of the book was “before the fall” rather than “after the fall” in the sense this book was referring. It was also a lot of repetitive actions by the teenagers. Typical teenage behavior consisting of hiding things from friends, secret crushes, parties, hating homework, etc. A good 60 percent of the book was the same stuff, although there was a building relationship intertwined in. However the final 40 percent seemed more rushed than it needed to be simply because the rest of the book was the lead up. I would have enjoyed reading more of the struggle following the turning point in the book and seeing how each individual character handled it. However, the time line was more rushed and I felt almost cheated out of those emotions.

  Even with the rushed timeline, I felt the characters were an interesting array that matches many different personality types. I love this type of book because everyone reading it can relate to someone. That is one of the most important things for an author to do is give characters that people can enjoy reading about and compare their own life experiences to. While I may not have loved every aspect of this book, I respect Hart’s work and writing and will definitely be looking forward to more of her work. Three out five stars for After the Fall.

  Pick up your copy of After the Fall by Kate Hart on January 24, 2017. You can pre-order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Also make sure you add the book to your To Reads list for 2017 on Goodreads and leave feedback for the author when you are finished. This is only Hart’s debut novel, so stay tuned for a lot more from her!

• Reader of Fictions
  http://readeroffictions.com/2017/01/review-fall-kate-hart/
  Word count: 1222

  Review: After the Fall by Kate Hart
  POSTED AT TUESDAY, JANUARY 31ST, 2017 AT 8:00 AM | REVIEWS, YOUNG ADULT
  I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

  Review: After the Fall by Kate HartAfter the Fall by Kate Hart
  Published by Farrar Straus and Giroux (BYR) on January 24, 2017
  Genres: Contemporary
  Pages: 336
  Format: ARC
  Source: Publisher
  Amazon • The Book Depository
  Goodreads
  one-star
  Seventeen-year-old Raychel is sleeping with two boys: her overachieving best friend Matt…and his slacker brother, Andrew. Raychel sneaks into Matt’s bed after nightmares, but nothing ever happens. He doesn’t even seem to realize she’s a girl, except when he decides she needs rescuing. But Raychel doesn't want to be his girl anyway. She just needs his support as she deals with the classmate who assaulted her, the constant threat of her family’s eviction, and the dream of college slipping quickly out of reach. Matt tries to help, but he doesn’t really get it… and he’d never understand why she’s fallen into a secret relationship with his brother. The friendships are a precarious balance, and when tragedy strikes, everything falls apart. Raychel has to decide which pieces she can pick up – and which ones are worth putting back together.

  Rachel Hart could definitely have written a book I would love. There’s evident talent in the writing, and there are moments where the voice really clicks. Unfortunately, I really don’t like the actual story part of After the Fall. By the time I finally got to the end of this slog, I hated it.

  The biggest problem is that After the Fall just is not what I thought I’d signed on for. The blurb had me prepared for some CW style pretty people with sexy drama. A love triangle between brothers sounded like potentially fabulous ship trash. While After the Fall is definitely a dramasaurus, it’s not the sexy kind; it’s the sad, mopey, frustrating, infuriating kind. So yeah, I wanted CW drama and I got Lifetime drama. And, just fyi, this book is not actually a romance. Problem #1.

  Stylistically, I had trouble with After the Fall. The book switches between Raychel’s POV and her best friend Matt’s. The voice is well done, so I shouldn’t have had any problem telling whose head I was in, but, since the POV sections last at most about three pages, I was forever losing track of which POV I was reading. The fact that the sections are so short and there were no chapters also contributed to me taking a million years to finish this off, because I put it down whenever I didn’t want to read more at the end of a section, and that was a lot.

  Raychel and Matt are literally sleeping together, but they do not have sex, much to Matt’s eternal penis feels disappointment. He thinks of her as “his girl,” but has never made a move. Instead he just mopes around while she hooks up with college guys; he’s afraid to tell her his feelings since she has a rule not to date high school guys because they brag around too much. His brother Andrew makes a move, and Raychel and he strike up a relationship.

  There’s a lot here about slut-shaming and sexual assault, though I wouldn’t say I find any of it especially deftly handled. Raychel’s sexually assaulted by classmate Carson twice, and she learns, thanks to Matt and Andrew’s mom, that a boy sticking his dick in your mouth without your consent is assault. Carson doesn’t, within the text, come to understand that what he did was wrong, though he has been signed up for a women’s studies class in college, so maybe he’ll get there.

  So far as the slut-shaming goes, After the Fall is one of those books where the heroine has a terrible reputation but turns out to be a virgin. It does make a point, but I don’t know how effective it is, when it always feels like “see, she’s not a slut afterall,” rather than clearly embracing sex positivity.

  Andrew and Matt’s parents are another problem. They don’t make any damn sense to me. They love Rachel like a daughter, and they let her sleep in Matt’s bed on the regular. Yet, when they learn that she and Andrew had sex, the mom freaks the fuck out about not in her house and yells at Rachel. There’s no way a mom like this would let a girl sleep in her son’s bed, even if she does dream of them getting married someday. So then the whole Dawson’s Creek bed buddies thing feels like a cheap plot device so the blurb can sell this book to trash like me with the “she’s sleeping with two brothers” half-truth. Also, after that point, I can only find the parents thoroughly hateful.

  Speaking of characters, I feel bad for Raychel and Andrew’s kinda okay. Andrew loses points for not asking Raychel what happened with Carson, but he gets points for actually recognizing sexual assault when they do talk. Matt’s the biggest asshole on the planet and Raychel needs to never talk to him again. As I mentioned, his parents are whatever the dramasaurus plot needs them to be at a given time. The fairly large cast of friends is only there to move the plot along and give advice to the MCs. A paragon of character development this book is not.

  I’d been sort of enjoying After the Fall in a crack way up until the 2/3 point. Then a thing happens. View Spoiler » This thing completely interrupts the narrative flow and changes the dynamics of the story. Character growth is interrupted, and After the Fall becomes a completely different kind of book. Reading everything that came before, the part I’d liked was suddenly pointless, because now everything was about this.

  The resolution does redeem After the Fall a wee bit, View Spoiler », but I was just way too done with this book by that point. The character arcs do finally happen, and I’m glad Matt got called out by literally everyone for being an asshole, but it wasn’t satisfying. I still have the sense that I’m meant to like Matt, in spite of his flaws, but all I want is to dickpunch him. The fact that Raychel apologizes to Matt over and over for wanting someone else’s dick makes me hulk out. Most frustrating of all, I feel like the whole novel is more about Matt than it is Raychel. All so one stupid asshole white boy can learn about sexual assault and what it means to be a real friend. Blergh.

  After the Fall has a lot of great reviews and buzz. Maybe it will be your thing, but it sure as hell was not mine.

Word Count