FEBRUARY YA BOOK OF THE MONTH: Afterlove by Tanya Byrne | review

 Hi Everyone!

I literally cannot wait for some of you to pick this up because I LOVE IT and I think you all would too! Also, Valentine's Day is of course in February and this is a love story, so it couldn't be more perfect. 

If you don't know, YA Book Of The Month is a feature on my blog where for each month I post about a specific YA book I love and basically try to convince you to read it! I include discussion posts, random chatty posts about the book and the first post is always a review of it like this one. You can find out more about it by reading my announcement.


Warning: this post contains many flashing capital letters. I apologise but this book deserves it so much.

If you read my 2021 Year In Books post, you will have seen that this book was mentioned but I didn't want to give too much away for this post, so now you finally have the review!



Car headlights.The last thing Ash hears is the snap of breaking glass as the windscreen hits her and breaks into a million pieces like stars. But she made it, she's still here. Or is she?

This New Year's Eve, Ash is gets an invitation from the afterlife she can't decline: to join a clan of fierce girl reapers who take the souls of the city's dead to await their fate.

But Ash can't forget her first love, Poppy, and she will do anything to see her again... even if it means they only get a few more days together. Dead or alive...


This is one of those books that I thought I might like but didn't realise I would love. I thought I would enjoy the 'Before' part more, learning about Ash and Poppy's love story and relationship but I also ADORED the 'After' part! I thought the supernatural elements would put me off but I LOVED them! They were so effective and believable, so entertaining and I fell head over heals in love with Ash, Poppy, Dev and Esen. Just thinking about them makes me SO happy! Their friendships and relationships were such a joy to read about!

Supernatural elements are not something I usually enjoy reading but as you can tell, this one was an exception! I loved how the real and supernatural mixed to create a story where all the characters felt so real! You just get to the point where you believe the supernatural is real because of the way it is woven in. It is such a special book and I think you might just have to trust me on this one because I really hesitated to pick it up! 

It is such a beautiful story with everything I love in it. It gave a great perspective into different lifestyles and that ending just MELTED MY HEART. It was so well crafted and thought out - just PERFECT! 

There were a few book references too which I definitely appreciated. One of the settings is in an old bookshop and Ash's sister is a huge bookworm! The bookshop setting was something I LOVED, antique bookshops in general just have this magic about them!

There are other parts to this which made it feel so special to me which I will discuss in a future post but overall this was such an incredible read and it became one of my favourite books of the year!

If I have convinced you to read this book then that's amazing and I'm so happy that you will discover this story! If I haven't, that's fine because I still have a whole month to do so :).

 

Thank you so much for joining me in another YA Book Of The Month post! As always if you have any recommendations or suggestions then please leave them in the comments! 

Happy Reading! 📚

 

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