After the Moment
by Garret Freymann-Weyr

    AFTER THE MOMENT by Garret Freymann-Weyr
    Category:  Contemporary
    Age Recommendation:  Grades 9+
    Release Date:  5/18/09
    Publisher:  Houghton Mifflin
    Reviewed by:  Angie Fisher
    Rating:  5 Stars


    No one can forget their first love, and Leigh Hunter isn’t any different.  

    Leigh is as close to the perfect boy as a girl could ever hope for: attractive, athletic, smart, and selfless. His life is
    rolling along nicely, as he is looking forward to his senior year and what the future might hold for him beyond high
    school.  Leigh’s biggest worry is finding a summer job that would look good on his college applications, until
    something horrible happens and his sister, Millie, needs him.  

    Not willing to let her down, Leigh packs up his things and moves a state away to be with Millie and help her begin to
    recover from her loss.  

    While taking care of Millie is in his plan, falling for the sweet-if-not-a-bit-odd Maia Morland is not, especially since he
    still claims the hottest girl in his school back home as his girlfriend.  But even the best laid plans have a way of
    changing, and the best intentions a way of crumbling.  

    AFTER THE MOMENT is a story of first love, but it’s so much more.  It’s a story of perseverance, strength and
    loyalty, but also of betrayal, pain, and disappointment.  It’s a story every reader who has loved and lost can relate to,
    which is the very reason it’s not one to be missed.  

       *****************************************************************************************

       A conversation with author Garret Freymann-Weyr, entitled "Five Things Men Said":

               SURPRISES ABOUT MEN; UNEXPECTED LESSONS FROM THE OTHER SIDE

           I didn’t set out to write a book from a young man’s point of view, but once Leigh’s story began forming in my
    mind and on the page, I knew I had some work to do.  Young men tend to be portrayed as either maladjusted
    geniuses (have you noticed that the YA genre is littered with boys who are intellectual prodigies?) or video-game
    playing dunderheads.   

            The guy I was writing about was neither.  He was thoughtful, but not brilliant.  He simply got up every day trying
    to figure out how to do the best he could.  I started to read memoirs by thoughtful men about what life was like when
    they were boys.  I was reassured that, yes, thoughtful boys exist, always have, still do.  But I hit a wall when it came
    to boys & sex.  A wall no amount of reading could fix.  So, I located my bravery (it was next to a pair of old ballet
    shoes), and went out to talk to those on the other side of the wall.  

            Here are some fun things men told me:  

    1.  Having sex for the first time does NOT stop you from thinking about it so much.  The first thing you want to do
    after having sex the first time is, well, have it again.  

    2.  If you ask a man why he wants to have sex, he will look at you as if you are speaking a different language.  Ask
    your girlfriend that question and you will hear words like Intimacy, Connection, Expression, Pleasure, Joy, Love.  The
    closest answer I got from men was Because.  I began to suspect it was like any habit: you bite your nails, you eat
    sweets, you want to have sex, you adjust your glasses, all without thinking.  Probably without noticing.  Just because.

    3.  Boys move around.  A lot.  It’s not just the jocks.  Young men work stuff out in movement.  No one said this to
    me flat out, but most of the men I spoke with (not to mention the brave, horrified teenage boys whose mothers
    pushed them my way) reported an adolescence lived in motion.    

    4.  They LOVE having a car.  Oh, my God, do they LOVE having a car.  Who knew?  I grew up hailing cabs, but
    my male counterparts tell me they LOVED that first car.
     
    5.  They fall in love for the first time when the girl with whom they want to sleep (or with whom they already are
    sleeping) grabs their attention in some non-physical way.  Now, maybe I wanted to hear that, and maybe I talked to
    an odd bunch, but in the things they said, and how their faces looked when we moved from the topic of sex to that
    first time love struck, led me to this conclusion.  As one gentleman succinctly put it, “Wanting her was a given;
    thinking about her was a shock.”

           I would hasten to add that that all of these “lessons” were gleaned by my highly subjective brain as I listened to
    men talk.  A different woman might have learned different things.  No one is an expert on gender.   But most writers
    spend their lives observing others.  We live for -- and through  -- what we see.  And if we don’t think we’re seeing
    clearly, we try to see from as many different angles as possible.