Every Moment After

Review from School Library Connection:

The reader first meets Cole and Matt on the morning of their high school graduation. It's a bittersweet moment, especially with the eighteen black-draped chairs set apart for the classmates who died in a shooting when they were all in elementary school. Both boys carry the weight of that tragedy on top of their own problems with family, illness, and just the general strife associated with growing up. The novel is told through the eyes of both boys. Cole has decided to put off college to work and help his mom, who he thinks is still grieving over the recent death of her husband. Shy and a bit on the nerdy side, Cole spends much of the summer trying to tell a classmate that he has a crush on her before she leaves for college. He is also busy helping his best friend Matt procure and sell prescription drugs. Matt seems to have it all. He's rich, popular, and athletic. Underneath the facade, he's racked with survivor's guilt for happening to be home sick the day of the school shooting and is generally disillusioned with life. Despite his baseball scholarship, he skips out on physical therapy for his injured elbow, deliberately allows his diabetes to slide out of control, and enters into a dangerous relationship with an older woman who is being pursued by a jealous, psychotic police officer. Although the book does have a good message about friendship, loss, and moving on from pain, the plot moves very slowly and is often confusing when it switches back and forth between the two narrators. There are also questions left unanswered, and neither of the boys are given a sufficiently strong voice and character development to let readers know who they really are. Librarians should be aware of sexual content, cursing, and drugs.