The Afterlife of Mal Caldera - Nadi Reed Perez - ★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Nadi Reed Perez

GENRE: Contemporary Fantasy

PUBLICATION DATE: June 11, 2024

RATING: 3.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A contemporary fantasy featuring a ghost in the afterlife. Unusual plot, interesting characters, powerful themes. Unfortunately, the writing style didn’t work that much for me. But to the right reader, this should offer much to ponder upon.

Plot Preview:

Mal Caldera. Twenty-seven. Half-Spanish. Ex-rockstar and rebel. Estranged daughter of her Catholic family. Selfish. Newly dead.

Does Mal regret being dead? Not really. Her only concern is that her younger sister Cris, who is now alone with their overly religious mother, should know that Mal didn’t kill herself. As the other ghosts are busy enjoying the afterlife, Mal finds a reclusive medium named Ren and attempts to convince him to get in touch with Cris. But as Ren and Mal come close to each other, Mal realises that her life had offered her some options that she no longer has.

The story comes to us in Mal’s first person perspective.

Bookish Yays:

🤩 Mal’s character: not exactly likeable or typical. Loved her complicated nature, as well as her matter-of-fact ghost voice.

🤩 The offbeat plot: offered many surprises. I thought I knew what to expect from such a storyline, but I was wrong.

🤩 Ren and Cris: Loved these two characters! Wanted much more of them and also wanted much more for them.

🤩 Inclusive representation of ethnic and gender diversities. Loved how Día de los Muertos was woven into the plot.

🤩 The themes of grief, mental health, suicide and coping: dark topics explored well. Also the message: Make the best of life and don’t wait till it is too late.

🤩 The story being divided into sections titled after the stages of grief. Not the original five stages but a slightly amended ten stages. Interesting and appropriate!

🤩 The ending: good for the plot without being sappy or exaggerated.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

😐 There’s a whole array of ghosts from various eras and it’s fun to read their interactions. But the afterlife of the ghosts wasn’t too appealing to me – almost all the living dead seemed interested in partying and physical relationships than on figuring out why they were stuck in the in-between.

😐 Prior to this, the author has written a fantasy fiction podcast titled ‘The Call of the Flame’. This debut novel offers strong podcast-type feels, with a lot of plot development happening through conversations. While these are insightful as well as funny at times, such writing doesn’t work well for me. If you aren’t bothered by scenes with lengthy back-and-forth conversations, then this point is irrelevant to you.

😐 Though the promised humour is present in the book, the overall tone is more emotional than funny. It’s not exactly a depressing book, but it is more poignant than the blurb claims.

Bookish Nays:

😟 At 464 pages, this book is quite long. And with too much time spent on the backstories of the other ghosts, the proceedings are also quite slow. The middle section feels especially dragged.

😟 Despite the above, the secondary character development falls somewhat flat. Character motivations aren’t much clear, even for important characters such as Alastair and Evie.

😟 The blurb makes it feel like this book is primarily Mal’s journey of making recompense, but it isn’t. A lot of time is invested in other subplots, some of which feel repetitive and unnecessary. I would have loved the focus to be mainly on Mal’s attempt to make amends with her sister Cris.

😟 While I am all for rad story ideas, reading sex scenes between a human and a ghost is too weird for me. The scenes are fairly clean, but I just couldn’t palate the concept. My bad!

The book is promoted as being for fans of ‘The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue’. To my utter regret, I still haven’t got around to reading it, so I cannot comment on the common appeal. I did get some vibes of ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeda’ from this work, but only in the sense of characters navigating the afterlife in the hope of finding and providing closure. In tone, the Sri Lankan International Booker winner is much darker than this one.

Overall, I do see the merits of this work, but the extended conversational sequences and the human-ghost sex scenes didn’t work for me. If these aren’t an issue for you, and you enjoy atypical fantasies with meaningful themes, then this unusual story could be right up your alley.

My thanks to Titan Books and Edelweiss+ for the DRC of “The Afterlife of Mal Caldera”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.