Teen Review: After the Snow

After the Snow by S.D. Crockett
Release Date ~ March 27, 2012
Feiwel & Friends ~ Macmillan
ISBN13: 9780312641696
ARC received from Raincoast Books for review
Goodreads Synopsis:
Fifteen-year-old Willo was out hunting when the trucks came and took his family away. Left alone in the snow, Willo becomes determined to find and rescue his family, and he knows just who to talk with to learn where they are. He plans to head across the mountains and make Farmer Geraint tell him where his family has gone.

But on the way across the mountain, he finds Mary, a refugee from the city, whose father is lost and who is starving to death. The smart thing to do would be to leave her alone -- he doesn't have enough supplies for two or the time to take care of a girl -- but Willo just can't do it. However, with the world trapped in an ice age, the odds of them surviving on their own are not good. And even if he does manage to keep Mary safe, what about finding his family?
 Huh.  That's really all I have to say after reading this book.  I'm not one hundred percent sure what to make of it.  I mean, it definitely was not terrible, but after reading it I'm just not sure what to say.  I do think that I maybe put a bit too much hope into this book. 
I read the synopsis on the back of the book, and I read the first couple of pages, and all I thought was, "This really reminds me of Chaos Walking."  Chaos Walking is one of my favourite book series, that I will not delve into too much detail in this review.  I absolutely loved the series, and I think I may have put too much pressure on this novel because of it.

1. Unique World:
   This novel takes place in the future, and one could put this into the dystopian genre.  I really liked the world because I found it to be fairly different from other dystopian novels.  In this version, it's like our world has been turned into Narnia during the White Witch era.  It begins to snow, and it never stops.  Because of this world, I found that instead of society progressing, it seemed to be regressing very much so.  There was no real technology mentioned in this book, which was a refreshing take on what the world could be like in the future.  I found it to be an interesting and unique concept.

This novel didn't really do it for me partly because the dialogue I found to be a bit annoying, what with the main character not knowing how to speak properly, but mainly because the world was not explored enough.  The main characters kept on drawing conclusions that I could not jump to because frankly, I did not understand the world enough. 

I think that this book had really great potential, but everything just seemed a bit rushed at the end.  Connections were made that didn't make any sense to me.  I found myself just getting more and more confused.  There were a lot of loose ends that were never tied up.  By the time I finished the book, I just went, "Huh...".  This book was not a waste of my time, but I was pretty disappointed in it.