Welcome to Marigold Horizons - Erin Forget - ★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Erin Forget

GENRE: Urban Fantasy

PUBLICATION DATE: May 2, 2026

RATING: 3.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: An urban fantasy about souls stuck in limbo in a funeral home. Excellent character study with flawed characters at the helm. Unlike what the title and cover indicate, the story is somewhat tense and even tragic, but this is balanced by many moments of humour and bonding. The writing style didn’t work for me but the plot mostly did, though I could have done without the blasphemous elements. Recommended, as long as you aren’t fussy about writing. Some triggering content mainly related to cults.

Plot Preview:

Ontario, Canada. Official rules require that the dead, even if unclaimed, always be given a proper burial. But in the implementation of this lies a grey area, because of which a few souls find themselves stuck in limbo at the Marigold Horizons funeral parlour. We have an artist desperate for fame even after death, a wrestler no longer in her prime, a sex worker who also was a serial killer when alive, a young German tourist who misses his new lady love, and a religious cult member who is sure she is meant to save the others. The humans behind the souls are as varied as could be, but despite their similar circumstances, they long for different things. Is there any resolution for their situation, or are they destined to stay at the funeral home forever?

The story comes to us from the (mostly) third-person perspective of each of the five souls over multiple decades.

Bookish Yays:

👻 The introductory note about the process related to unclaimed bodies in Ontario and the right to dignified burial. Very important in understanding some whys of the book.

👻 The uniqueness of the plot. There have been quite a few books about souls stuck ‘in between’, but of all the ones I have read, I can honestly say that this has been the most unusual one. Most such stories focus on life lessons or regrets or about moving on. But in this novel, we continue to see the human strengths and flaws behind the non-human souls, which makes the proceedings quite interesting.

👻 The five souls whom we meet in the story and their diverse backgrounds. Each character profile, by virtue of their varying personality, professional background, age, maturity level, and tech exposure, offers a tremendous potential for drama. Not all the characters are likeable, which adds further depth to the plot.

👻 The gradual introduction of the characters. Each newly-dead person is introduced in a fresh chapter that provides us a brief background of their life, moves to the scene of their death, and of how they end up waking at Marigold Horizons. The introductory scenes help a lot in getting a handle on the character’s personality as well as give us time to know them each one by one.

👻 The setting of Marigold Horizons. To be clear, I have no idea if funeral homes in Canada look like what is shown on the book cover, but the novel utilises the location well, right from its office to its basement.

👻 I thought the serial killer arc would be devious, but turns out, the track of the religious cult member was the most triggering, in terms of both her brainwashed thinking and the depiction of her life in the cult. I should have sympathised with her the most but her unhinged attitude left me mostly jittery and annoyed. The depiction is quite true to cult members who cannot see right, so I cannot even put this as an Okay or a Nay – the portrayal is that realistic.

👻 The humour, coming either through the character banter or their reactions to certain worldly developments after their deaths. It helps balance the tension of the storyline.

Bookish Okays:

⚱ The blurb goes too far ahead in the plot and also creates a slight misconception. The five souls don’t come together at once. In fact, one doesn’t appear until the second half. I didn’t mind the late appearance, but because the blurb mentions five souls, I kept waiting for the remaining ones to appear. It sullied the surprise.

⚱ The vocabulary in some characters’ dialogues is quite adult, and at times, even vulgar. To be fair, this mostly suits the characters’ backgrounds.

⚱ I’m not a fan of infodump endings, but in this book, it comes through a clever format, which both is believable and offers enough details for us to fill in some blanks. I just wish so much of information hadn’t been kept in reserve only for that ending. I also wanted the five characters’ reactions at what eventually happened. The closure was incomplete even though the story was complete.

Bookish Nays:

⚰ The story spans quite a long time (at least three decades if not more), but the passage of time isn't always clear. The time clues come at ad hoc intervals, but because our characters aren’t aging (for obvious reasons), it is tougher to keep track of the length of their wait. Further, some developments happen in the interim period and we come to know of them only later.

⚰ I wish some restraint had been used in the blasphemous portions. Just because one soul is from a cult doesn’t mean that Jesus is to be insulted. Cultists aren’t even true Christians! This content could easily have been avoided, or at least toned down.

⚰ Each character’s arc is in third person, but at times, the writing suddenly switches to first person. Often depicting their inner monologues, these come without any visual indicator such as being in italics, and are way too frequent. Many times, a single paragraph has a random mix of first-person and third-person from the same character with no visible change in the typeface. It was quite jarring for me to keep shifting between the voices even if the character was the same. The writing also tends towards too much telling at times.

Overall, the uniqueness of the plot and the flawed characters kept me interested in this indie novel. If the writing hadn’t jumped around so much between first and third person POVs, if the time spans had been better handled, and if the blasphemous content had been eliminated, the book would have worked even better for me. If you aren’t as fussy as I am about writing and can enjoy uncommon plots without bothering about writing devices, then you might enjoy this book more.

Recommended to readers who want to try a different kind of storyline and like character-driven stories. Despite the ‘fantasy’ tag and the potential for paranormal scares, the story is fairly grounded and should be okay even for those who don’t like fantasies.

My thanks to author Erin Forget for providing me with a complimentary copy of “Welcome to Marigold Horizons” at my request. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.