One Liner: Entertaining but a bit lengthy
 

Delphie dies by choking on a microwave bugger. It is embarrassing! However, she is shocked to wake up in Afterlife, a place that feels a lot like the earth but isn’t. Delphie is still getting used to the feeling of being dead when she crashes into a handsome young man who makes her heart sing. 

However, turns out, the guy is not dead and has to go back to the earth. Fortunately, Delphie is given a chance to go back to the earth. However, she needs to find him, make him fall in love with her, and kiss her – all within ten days to continue being alive. Can Delphie do what it takes to not die again? 

The story comes in Delphie’s first-person POV. 

How can I ignore a premise like this? Imagine finding love in your afterlife and having to come back alive for it (way too much work, IMO, but Delphie is game, so why not). 

The book opens with a bang. We are right in the scene with Delphie choking on the burger. It shouldn’t be funny but it is. 

The Afterlife will need some getting used to. The best thing to do is go with the flow and don’t compare it to other settings or what you know about the place. It sounds more like a corporate office (be warned!). 

Though the blurb makes it a romance, the book is also about finding one's tribe, new friendships, coming out of the shell, closing past trauma, etc. That makes the side characters (some of them) quite interesting. 

Delphie is a socially awkward twenty-seven-year-old. That leads to a lot of second-hand embarrassment, which went a bit OTT in the middle. While it makes sense in a way, it sure isn’t easy to see the FMC make a fool of herself. Thankfully, things change as the realization strikes. Moreover, we also notice that the FMC made her share of mistakes (which she conveniently forgets), so she is not always easy to like or empathize with. It makes her real but also a tad annoying. 

One character is a diehard fan of romance (pun intended), which means other romance authors and tropes are also mentioned in between. This may or may not work for all readers. I didn’t mind it much but I wouldn’t have felt their absence either. 

The pacing is a bit uneven though not so much that the story drags. However, I would have preferred it if the ending didn’t try to pack so much into it. The book is already 400 pages, so the narrative should be steady and evenly distributed. A lot happens in the last 20%, some of which do seem a bit excessive. 

To summarize, The Love of My Afterlife is an entertainer that attempts to do something different with the tried and tested tropes from the romance genre. That said, you will like it more if you connect with the FMC. 

My thanks to Anne (Random Things Tours), NetGalley, and Penguin Publishing House, for the eARC. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. 

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