#afterlove

[yourfaveisqueerandreligious]

ashana "ash" persaud from afterlove is catholic (canon) and a lesbian (canon)

submitted by anon

[luxaofhesperides]

AFTERLOVE by Tanya Byrne

...I nod again, then start walking toward Charon, who holds out his hand to me as I mouth Esen's words over and over, thinking about Poppy, her hair everywhere, waiting for me on a shore somewhere. We found each other in life. And we found each other in death. So I will find you now, whatever's beyond the sea.

[homerjacksons]

Took a really pretty book photo today and wanted to share it with y’all even though I won’t be posting it on my bookstagram for a while.

[thepathetickind]

if I could grow a new heart I'd try to love you again

by laurenmaerie, a second chance

[the-way-astray]

i saw that you are (?) taking book recs. Here is my favorite book ever.

Warning: it is in fact HoMoSeXuAl (*gasp* could you tell??) /silly

I promise it's not just a silly romance book. It actually has a devastating plot riddled with angst, death, sadness, and lesbians. My favorite combination! also cool side characters

damn, it's gay???? i would've never known . . . i'll add it to the tbc but it probably won't be a priority because i love paranormal shit way too much. anything that isn't paranormal or something adjacent like dystopia instantly gets de-prioritized . . . sorry

[the-quietestmela]

When you finish a book about death and the characters actually DIE!??!

[thatboleyngirl77]

Has anyone ever randomly realised that there are eight billion people on this planet, so there is a pretty high chance that someone will have the same name as a person in a book/show/movie/play that you've seen?

(just to name a few) There could very easily be a:

Connor Murphy

Percy Jackson

Veronica Sawyer

Harry Potter

Isla Devlin

Heather Chandler

Amy Santiago

Sally Jackson

Evan Hansen

Jason Dean

Elle Woods

Esen Budak

Jake Peralta

In this world and they don't even realise the significance of that name to so many people.

[lexsreadingcorner]

I started Afterlove by Tanya Byrne last night, cuz apparently the only genre holding my attention this month is YA romance, and it's cool. But the author made a choice with the story structure, and the choice is making me bored.

Basically, Ashana meets and falls in love with a girl. She's a fall fast, fall hard person, and I can see people bitching about insta-love, but imo I think insta-love can be done right and it is realistic. Some people are just Like That (I know, I'm one such person.) The story opens with Ashana dead and doing her new job as a Reaper. Then we switch to the last few months she was alive, and the author is really beating into the reader's head how in love she is, how she can finally see her future, how excited for that future she is, etc.

The goal (I assume) is to make it a lot more painful when she dies, or have that underlying sense of dread knowing that none of this will happen. But because we open the story with her already dead, this doesn't feel nearly as impactful as it would if we didn't know she was going to die. And it's going on and on to the point that I've been skimming the last like 15 pages. We're mostly in her head with some breaks for dialogue, so it's like "okay okay I get it, can we move on with the plot now?" And I understand and appreciate the author wanting to establish their relationship thoroughly before yanking it away, then bringing Poppy (the girlfriend) back in, but please. It's been 116 pages. As bad as this sounds, I'm ready for her to die. I'm ready for the next stage of the plot.

I do genuinely like this book, but it's dragging in the depths of the main character's introspection. I want the Reaper part of the story to start!

Speaking of Reapers, I also started The Keeper of Night by Kylie Lee Baker. Got about 20 pages in before I had to put it down. The combination of the MCs cruelty toward dying humans + the very descriptive cruelty and violent abuse she faced at the hands of other Reapers because she's biracial was so much all at once, and I needed something a little softer. I'll revisit it when I can handle that.