We hope you’re enjoying our Capsule Book Club recommendations! This month we’re transporting ourselves out of the grey winter slump we’ve found ourselves in, and headed somewhere warm, hilarious and joyful thanks to The Love of My Afterlife, which, of course, is available at The Warehouse now! (And click through for our previous installments!)
CAPSULE X THE WAREHOUSE
Is it just me, or are we getting to that time of year when things are a bit… well, kind of glum?
Maybe it’s the fact that we’re in the depths of winter and likely all vitamin-D deficient? Maybe the cost-of-living crisis and every-other-crisis in the news is starting to really wear away at us? Maybe we’re exhausted from juggling work and ANOTHER lot of school holidays? Maybe all the best TV at the moment is dark, stressful and harrowing (I’m looking at you Presumed Innocent and The Bear)? Maybe it’s perimenopause? Maybe we’re all just a bit darn tired and over it?
Whatever it is, just about everyone I’ve been speaking to lately is feeling a bit blah and ready to curl up in bed and hibernate for a very long time – or be teleported to a tropical island, stat.
And while I don’t have a holiday in the calendar just yet (or the bank balance to fund such a thing), this last week I’ve managed to find a little uplifting escape away from reality, that came in at the cool cost of just $26.
And yes, it came in the form of a book.
A very delightful book.
Because, besides Marion Keyes’ gorgeous My Favourite Mistake, most of the books I’ve read of late have been as dark as my tastes in TV and podcasts (I need to stop listening to murder mysteries before bed, that’s for sure). But this week I read The Love of My Afterlife, which is as batsh*t crazy as the title suggests, but also just utterly fun and joyous and lovely.
If you’re looking for a winter escape, it’s just the tonic.
I went into reading this book only knowing the title and that Colleen Hoover had said this about it: “Humour, heart and a heroine I was desperately rooting for”.
I read my first Colleen Hoover book this year (I know, where have I been) and polished off Verity – a veeeery dark and twisty book – in a few nights. So, seeing Colleen’s name, I figured this might be of a similar vein.
But no, this book, despite being a lot to do with death is anything but bleak – it’s whimsical, fun and heartfelt. It follows Delphie, a 27-year-old who has never been in a relationship and prefers to keep people at arm’s length (at the very closest). She prefers to guard her heart and live a quite solitary life – apart from having breakfast every morning with Mr Yoon, an elderly man who lives in her complex and who cannot speak.
But then, one fateful night, Delphie has the extraordinary bad luck of choking to death on a microwave burger and lands up in the afterlife wearing the sort of pyjamas, well, you wouldn’t want to be caught dead in. She immediately meets her (rather bonkers) afterlife therapist at her afterlife destination of Evermore. But then – things take a wonderful turn, she’s not alone in the waiting area of Evermore, there’s also a very handsome stranger there. She has an immediate and unexpected connection with him – before they realise it, they’re holding hands. But, things derail once more when the therapist announces it is a mistake he is there and sends him back to the land of the living.
All is not lost though – in a true romantic twist of fate, Delphie is offered a deal: if she can track down her soulmate – who she knows only as Jonah T and the fact that he lives somewhere in London – and get him to kiss her of his own free will within 10 days, she can stay alive. If she fails, she’ll be whisked back to the afterlife.
This book is utterly nuts but utterly enjoyable. It’s a real twist on the fairytale idea of a being saved with a kiss and features a cast of enjoyable and quirky characters.
After the first fun chapter in the afterlife, when it moved back to Delphie’s life – and plodding around on Facebook searching for Jonahs – I wasn’t sure how much I was going to enjoy this book after all. I found Delphie a bit hard to figure out. She seemed completely unlikeable – often rude and unkind to those around her. But did she have another side to her? Was she actually compassionate and strong and selfless at heart?
Over the 10 days of her challenge, we get to see many more different sides of Delphie and go on some extreme and downright wacky adventures as her quest becomes about a lot more than just finding ‘happily ever after’ with a prince charming. It’s filled with nods to popular romance tropes, pop culture lols, some magical realism, paranormal sci-fi, and, just a lot of heartwarming, life-affirming fun.
If you need a break and shift out of the grey this month, this is just the ticket – I mean, just look at that cover of colour and joy!