Sorry about the mixed up formatting, my site recently updated or something and now the pictures are looking weird. I also have been getting a ton of views recently? I had like 1200 recently which is crazy because I don’t think anyone reads this. So thank you if you are! In any case, I have posted next to nothing this week and it’s time to review After Life! I read this one in one sitting – it’s pretty short – last weekend and just couldn’t bring myself to review it. The book did succeed at filling me with emotion, but it also didn’t make a lot of sense. Gayle Forman is good at that, I think. The cover is one of the prettiest I’ve seen in a while though!

When the book begins, the author leaves you with plenty of questions. Why is Amber back? What brought her back? What does this mean for our metaphysical reality? What is going to be the theme – something about grief and togetherness or maybe something about premarital soul ties and not hitting people with your car?

None of these questions were answered.

And the only theme I could make out was that if you believe in God but don’t like what he says about how to live your life, just go find a new church that doesn’t read the Bible.

There’s definitely a lot that happens in this book and the characters do a lot of growing (kind of?) but I can’t tell you where the rising action or climax was supposed to be. There’s no lead up or increasing suspense. The only sort of “suspense” I had was frustration, because I kept expecting a book where a girl literally comes back to life to explain why she did. I’m going to tell you right now before you read it that they don’t find out why, so don’t go into it expecting to figure that out.

What basically happens is that this girl “comes back to life” seven years after her death. She hasn’t changed at all, but everything else in her life has. Her sister is goth and lesbian now, her Mom is still a Catholic (but seems to lose faith when the girl comes back?), her parents are divorced, and her boyfriend is now a skinny alcoholic who works at a bar and is completely depressed. Everyone is very broken up over her still, especially her family, so much of the book is spent healing old wounds and trying to figure out what happened to her.

My biggest problem with this book that all of the events that happened after Amber comes back are soooo unrealistic. They author basically put together this book in an attempt to convey a theme but twisted normal human behavior to do so. First of all, the family’s first response is to hide Amber. Why? Not because the whole world would freak out because someone came back to life. Not because they wanted to make sure she was staying before they told people. No. It was because they were worried people would think she had faked her death so her parents could collect money from donations.

There are so many reasons why this is crazy: 1) why are you thinking about money and what others think as soon as your daughter who’s been dead for seven years shows up? and 2) why would anyone assume she faked her death? There was a body. She looks the same as she did seven years ago. Her whole family went through an insane grieving process and came out atheist, divorced, an alcoholic, or gay. I’m sorry I just can’t get over that plot point.

Secondly, nobody does anything for the whole book. Amber just kind of has conversations with people or thinks about things. The only interesting things that happen are in the flashbacks. You’d think that the family would not just go back to living their normal lives when their kid comes back to life but nope, that’s exactly what they do. And they leave her at home because no one can see her or they’ll accuse the parents of charity fraud.

The individual reactions to her return are crazy, too. Her mom – understandably – acts super scared and freaked out when she shows up at first. Eventually though, you’d expect some beautiful mom scene where the mom cries with joy and is so happy to have her daughter back. Nope, instead she goes from being super freaked out to just treating her daughter like part of the routine. She’ll come home from work or something and just be like, “Hey Amber,” as if nothing happened. Of course they have heart-to-hearts, but they’re all super dramatic and mostly read like regular teen vs. parent issues: Mom, pleeaase I wanna go see my boyfriend! Not now honey, he’s a raging alcoholic because you died seven years ago. Also, he’s way older than you now.

Her Dad turns to Jesus? Her mom had always been a Catholic and her dad an atheist, but he sees Amber coming back as a miracle. His response to her is mostly realistic – super excited, about to tell the priest (Mom says no though – remember, the priest will send you to hell for charity fraud) – but as soon as everyone finds out Amber’s younger sister is gay and Catholics don’t affirm that, he’s just like “Welp, let’s just go to the Unitarian church down the street!” Because God’s doctrines change depending on what church you go to. The religion element could’ve been so well done and a great theme but it was just a really dumb way to bring secular spirituality in and call Catholics bigots. Not a fan.

Finally, her sister is obviously surprised at first but becomes really chill really fast. Again, everybody kind of immediately starts acting like she’s part of the routine again. They’ll go and do stuff and then come home and Amber’s just hanging out there. They have deep conversations where they don’t tell anything about how she died or what happened to her boyfriend and then go about living their lives.

Overall it was just a very slow, irrelevant, and strange plot.

Every few chapters from Amber’s point of view, there’s a flashback POV chapter that skips time all over the place. It’ll jump to the perspectives of random related (and seemingly unrelated) people from 30 years back up to a few moments. But that’s the weird thing about these chapters – they’re all named like “Five Years Before” but it’s never clear what the before is. At first you think it’s just before the girl came back from death, but some chapters seemed like they would’ve taken place before she died but the time given was weird? The author basically just made the reader do a lot of mental work to figure out where they were in the timeline.

These chapters gave some background info on Amber, the crash, her boyfriend, her family, etc. and revealed things alongside the main timeline as Amber learned them. A couple chapters though were from the POVs of people whom Amber has affected or touched in her lifetime – a random photographer, a teacher, etc. These POVs all came together at the end and became significant, but it was kind of a lot to keep track of and none of them seemed super relevant. I think it was all trying to contribute to the theme of “togetherness and grief and something something good can come out of hard things” (yes, it was vague) but they felt kind of dropped into the story and not really connected to Amber in meaningful ways. For example, the photographer thought Amber was special compared to other school students he’d shot because she had a nice smile. Kinda creepy for an adult man to be thinking that about a high school girl and then dwelling on it after she dies, but okay.

Other than the weird POV chapter styles, I thought the writing style was fine. It was just a lot of thinking, flashing back, and dialogue rather than actual action.

I’m starting to feel bad for only writing negative things but there just wasn’t a lot to like about this book. The characters included. Amber herself was very boring. She seemed like your average small-town popular/nice girl who everybody likes and has no flaws except she bullies her baby sister (and is apparently very bold when it comes to intimacy with her boyfriend – more on that later). When she dies, she’s made into an idol of the community and suddenly everyone has stories of how she changed their lives. I totally understand grieving a student, but for some reason Amber’s death was different for everyone. Even a teacher from the POV chapters said he’d witnessed multiple students die in his time as a teacher, but for some reason Amber’s affected him more. And he never explained why. Why was her death more sad than the rest of the deaths he’d seen. There were just a lot of cheap plot holes. Amber stayed boring in the main timeline as well, just kind of hanging around haunting everybody and trying to learn what happened to her instead of just forcing someone to tell her.

The family was honestly more interesting than her, and they annoyed me too. Everyone just made a lot of bad decisions.

Especially the boyfriend. Do not get me started on him. I’m super tempted to spoil stuff but he does super dumb and not okay stuff without even a pity explanation, like “he was just depressed” or something. He’s just stupid. And he never solves his own problem. Instead, Amber fixes everything for him even when she comes back. And his reaction to seeing her back to life for the first time… what the heck even was that?! I hope I’m not spoiling it too much but if you’ve made it this far you might not be planning on reading the book…

Listen, I’m sure there was a deep message for some people. I’m sure Amber’s story really warmed people’s heart and maybe even helped them through grief. But After Life was not for me. The numerous plot holes, ridiculous storyline, boring and unrealistic characters, and attempts at making a moral statement and then getting it wrong just ruined it for me. As a Christian and book lover, I don’t think I would recommend this one.

Recently, I’ve felt like my site honestly doesn’t have many good reviews. Like, there’s books on here that are okay, but my goal has been to find edifying, encouraging, and fun books for my demographic and I haven’t really succeeded. It’s just hard to get the books I want just shopping from the local library and Libby. If you have suggestions, let me know in the comments or follow me on Instagram and check out some of my other content (@bookmarks_are_for_quitters_314). I’d love to hear your book recs!