The Love of My Afterlife: A joyous, uplifting and laugh-out-loud romcom perfect for summer reading by Kirsty GreenwoodMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
When Delphie chokes to death on a microwave burger whilst wearing rather tatty PJs her main reaction is embarrassment that she could die in such a plebeian fashion. When she comes to, she is in a surreal 'waiting room', which looks very much like a laundromat, with a young woman called Merritt. Whilst trying to wrap her head around the idea of being dead and simultaneously in a laundromat, Delphie accidentally runs into another person, a devastatingly handsome man called Jonah who seems similarly smitten by Delphie. However, Jonah hasn't actually died, he is just in a very deep sleep caused by dental anaesthetic, and soon disappears. Horrified that she has met her soulmate only to have him taken away, Delphie and Merritt come to an agreement, Delphie has ten days to find Jonah and get him to voluntarily kiss her, if he does she can stay, if he doesn't then she must return and help Merritt test her dating service for the recently deceased. The catch is, she doesn't know his last name and he will have no recollection of their meeting.
Returned to where she came from, at first Delphie thinks it was all a surreal dream, until Merritt sends her a number of sharp messages abut time running out. With only ten days left on earth, Delphie realises that she has let childhood bullying (admittedly by her BFF) ruin her life, so much so that she has no friends, no love life, in fact she has only kissed one man (and that wasn't very good). Her only sort-of friend in Mr Yoon, the non-verbal elderly Korean man who lives in the same block of flats, who she drops in to visit daily to make sure he hasn't left the gas on or a burning cigarette in the ash-tray.
Initially this felt very like slapstick comedy (I'm not a fan) as Delphie runs from one bizarre situation to another trying to meet the elusive Jonah, but along the way she starts to make friends and/or enlist the assistance of a motley group of people she encounters along the way and the humour calms down. I loved Delphie's grumpy downstairs neighbour who gets roped into helping with the quest and demands a favour in return.
Overall this was a fun romance.
I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment