Not even death will tear them apart - or so the cover says!
Dates read:05/07/23 to 21/08/23
Star rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Word to describe: Heart-warming
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
I was in the worst reading slump of 2023 when I started reading Afterlove by Tanya Bryne. So let me set the scene, I had been reading heavy adult romances for a while and I wanted something that was an easy read and didn't take itself too seriously but still had a compelling storyline. Enter Afterlove.
This is a light and enjoyable read with the key theme of first love. There were so many moments of wholesomeness that even I had to take a break from the lovey-dovey-ness! It follows the emerging romance between two high school girls Ash and Poppy. Two gaybies with so much love to give, all they want is to spend their time together and kiss under the full moon on New Year's Eve. It was love at first sight, they had coffee dates and wrote each other adorable texts filled with adoration, they held hands on the sidewalk, and snuggled in bed together. It was the perfect teen romance. Until Ash died - oops is that a spoiler?
Ash Persaud is a girl with too much passion and not enough lesbian friends. Meeting Poppy was the once-in-a-lifetime romance that she vowed would last forever. I mean, she was obsessed with her red-headed, wild, and carefree girlfriend and she wanted to spend every moment with her. It was all going to plan until that fateful NYE celebration at the beach. Ash missed her curfew by staying late to smooch Poppy, and as the eldest daughter in an Asian household that was a big Hell No. But she wasn't just an hour late, she was a lifetime late after she was sadly killed in a freak accident.
Then she became a grim reaper and, wow, the story took a wild turn.
I already knew the plot of the book from reading the blurb but I was not expecting the storyline to be so delightfully whimsical and have that element of dark fantasy. I expected a cute and simple romance, but dead girls, grim reapers, and trying to save a teenager from sudden death? Wild card. I adored it though.
The relationship between Poppy and Ash was saccharine and sickly - in the best way. I felt reminiscent of reading their love story and remembering how I felt when I first fell in love for real. The book is split into two parts love and after. This only highlights the tragedy of Ash's death compared to the life that could have been - the life that this author dangled in front of her readers like a treat for a puppy. There is nothing more beautiful than first love and Tanya Bryne brought the emotions and reality of new romance to life with the perfect depiction of teenage love. It was amazing writing skills. I can't imagine many other authors being able to pull off a romance that is so real yet so fictional.
As the plot develops, Ash and her newfound reaper friends create an unlikely trio of mischief. Each character in this trio brings their sparkle of magic, we have the brooding goth teen, the manic pixie dream girl that wears pink fur coats like they're a fashion necessity, and we have Ash the newly birthed reaper with a vengeance and a desperation to be back with her beloved. The juxtaposition between the trio adds a little bit of sweetness to the second part of the book, making its entirety bittersweet.
Then Ash and Poppy are reunited in the unlikeliest of circumstances. Poppy is going to die and Ash is going to be her reaper. The newfound love crashes into one of legendary proportions (think Titanic movie-level romance) as the two spend their remaining hours enjoying each other's company and having one long date. Mini golf, a party, and a swim in the sea end their devastating love with a quiet goodbye a promise to return to one another.
The epilogue of the book shows readers that these two love birds are (thank God ) reunited and live out their immortality in each other's arms. In its entirety, this book is a delightful addition to lesbian teen romances with a storyline to rival that of best-selling They Both Die At The End. My overall view of this book is that the characters are amazingly written and the grief is perfectly displayed - the downside is that the secondary plot seems to lose the magic spark that grips readers in the first half (hence, the four-star rating). A wholesome story with a little something extra for the new generation of readers.
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