After Life - Gayle Forman - ★

AUTHOR: Gayle Forman

GENRE: YA Contemporary Fantasy

PUBLICATION DATE: January 7, 2025

RATING: 1 star.

In a Nutshell: A YA contemporary fiction with mild fantasy elements. Could have been awesome but the FMC is too YA, if you know what I mean. 😬 Basic writing, annoying characters, convenient developments. Minimal and ad hoc fantasy content. The only thing I liked was the plot structuring. Can’t recommend this, sorry.

Plot Preview:

When Amber cycles home one spring afternoon, the last thing she expects is her mother to scream on seeing her walk in. The reason is horrifying even to Amber. It seems she has been dead for seven years, having lost her life in a hit-and-run accident while riding the very same bicycle she just rode home. But Amber doesn’t feel dead!

The return affects not just Amber but her family and other acquaintances who were active in her life when she was alive. A lot has changed in the last seven years and Amber needs to be prepared to face those developments bas well. How has Amber ‘returned’, if indeed she has come back from the dead? Is she still seventeen – the age she was when she died – or is she seven years older, with no recollection of the interim period? How should the family process Amber’s reappearance?

The story comes to us in two parallel narratives: one in Amber’s first person and the other in the third-person POVs of various characters from multiple timelines.

My good friends know that if I am picking up a YA book, it is not because of the YA factor but in spite of it. 🤭 In this case, the whole ‘returned from the dead after seven years’ was such an intriguing concept that I kept aside my apprehensions and opted for the book. Bad decision.

I still think the concept is fabulous. The start is especially intriguing because until we see the mother’s reaction, we don’t even know that Amber is dead, so it is creepy to realise that we were experiencing the first-person narration of a dead-yet-somehow-alive character. It is the poor YA-style execution that works strongly against the book.

Seventeen-year-old Amber is the typical teen protagonist. (That is to say, typical of poorly-written YA books, not of real-life teens.) She is concerned only about herself. Not once in the entire book does she try to understand why her family members responded the way they did on seeing her appear suddenly after seven years. Her obsession with her boyfriend Calvin and their “forever love” also got on my nerves. Getting the main story in her whiny first-person POV is tedious.

It might have helped if Amber was likeable in some way during her life or if she showed some kind of growth or regret over the course of her after-life. Sadly, the answer is ‘No’ for both. She does so many selfish things in both timeframes that I didn’t even feel bad she died young. I don’t get why the book was trying so hard to make us sympathise with such a self-obsessed manipulative character. What lesson does this send to the YAs reading this novel?

Unfortunately, most of the other main characters aren’t much better. As in all badly-written YAs, the teens think they know better than the adults in their lives and the adults are mostly self-serving jerks. Amber’s parents take one stupid decision after another, which makes it tough to empathise with their feelings. The only good thing I can say about the parents is that it was interesting to see the usual mom-dad reactions swapped. For a change, the mother is the sceptic and the father ends up emotionally invested.

With YA books, a clichéd portrayal of adults is often the norm, but good YA characters can still save the day. But that’s also dicey in this novel. Calvin is such a weirdo that the first thing he does on seeing Amber after seven years is rush to take off her clothes and initiate sex. What an ideal candidate for “one true love”! 🙄 A certain event didn’t even fit into Calvin’s general personality, but it was there just so that the plot could use it when convenient. Amber’s friend Casey is another annoying character, the typical mean girl types who does bad things just because she wants to. The only likeable exception is Melissa, Amber’s younger sister – probably the only main character with common sense and morals. I was sad at how pathetically she was treated by her parents.

I like two secondary characters as well. I can't reveal their identity (major spoilers) but I was horrified at how one of them was treated both by most other teen characters and by the plot. Given her BIPOC background, her fawning forgiveness of the white characters caused me much irritation.

The idea of having alternate chapters from other characters is brilliant. These chapters, filling in some backstory of their individual experiences over multiple years, offer the much-required depth to the narrative. They also provide welcome relief from Amber’s self-obsessed first-person narration. Not all of the POVs are well-written, and some offer convenient twists. But on the whole, these chapters help us understand the characters and their reactions when Amber turns up undead. My favourite of these is the English teacher’s track.

At the start, it is tough to keep track of the who’s who in the above chapters because each perspective is from a new character. Because the characters are quite randomly connected to Amber, we can't instantly figure out who is important to the story and who is just an incidental character. Only after some chapters do the characters start repeating, and their interconnections start popping up even later. The timelines also vary, and are not in chronological order. It might help to keep notes of the characters and their connection to Amber; this will come in handy during the finale.

As can be seen, the characters tested every bit of my patience. But it would still have helped if the book had other saving graces. Alas!

Take Amber’s return. We don't even know how or why she has come back, or what happened to her in the interim seven years. What is she at present – a ghost? A soul? A functional zombie? (Yeah okay, not a zombie!) She can't smell or eat (which seems to bother no one in her family 🤐) but can sleep. She can't feel hugs but can use the computer and her bicycle. Basically, the conditions of her after-life are vague, with the details sketched in as per the convenient needs of the plot.

The writing is also basic. Some scenes are outright cringeworthy. I don’t want to read YA books talking about the "bulge in his pants". And please, what the heck is this: “I pull him towards me… My Calvin. Calvin’s lips. Calvin’s hands. Calvin’s stubble. Calvin’s spit. I want to drink it all in.” Who gets romantically excited over spit, even if it belongs to your “forever love”? 🤮

The religious angle often comes into play through Amber’s parents and their contradictory views on faith. This could have been an interesting subplot, but the execution is half-baked.

There are some twisty reveals in the story. Some are farfetched and predictable, though one did catch me totally unawares. However, this unexpected revelation also didn’t satisfy me as it further highlighted how unfair the book was towards the only coloured characters.

So many poignant topics connected to grief after the death of a loved one (or even death of oneself in Amber’s case) could have been explored in the writing. But thanks to our teenaged narrator, the discussion is mostly superficial. Like, in one scene, she actually wonders if she died early because she had premarital sex. Oh boy!

The ending is smooth. Utterly, flawlessly, ridiculously smooth. Hopes and dreams are stirred, happy hugs are exchanged, breakups are turned into patch-ups, all sins (even major ones such as cheating on your girlfriend with her best friend) are pardoned with a big smile. So much of joyful forgiving is probably not done even in Hallmark movies. 🤐 But in all the neat tying up of everything, the most crucial thing stays unanswered: What triggered Amber’s sudden return after seven years and where was she until then? No idea.

Basically, I don’t get the purpose of this book. The concept had tremendous potential but the execution needed a whole load of finetuning, all the more as it aims at YA readers and hence must not put wrong ideas in their impressionable minds.

I might have been a bit more lenient if this were by a young debut writer, but given the author’s age, experience and credentials, I cannot forgive many of the writing choices. Of course, some of the things that annoyed me such as the OTT romantic declarations or the irritating behaviour of the adults might be enjoyed by actual YAs. But given what incorrect ideas this puts in their heads about adult behaviour, religion, cheating, and pre-marital sex, I do not feel like recommending it to them as well.

I do love the cover art. Quite interesting that the colour scheme is boring brown in the US edition but a vivid purple in the UK one, even though the same design is retained. I like the purple much better.

I can't recommend this to anyone, sorry. But as in all cases, a review is just one person’s opinion. So do read other reviews and take a better call on the book.

My thanks to HarperCollins Children's Books and Quill Tree Books for providing the DRC of “After Life” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Sorry this didn’t click with me.