I am a huge fan of Gayle Forman's work and this book does not disappoint. A portrait of family and friends grieving over the loss of their daughter, sister and friend. Grieving can take so many forms and is different for everyone. A great insight into grief and the way if affects those who love. Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Another hit from Gayle Forman! I tore through After Life in one sitting. The character development is excellent and the plot moves at just the right pace. The switching POV keeps the pace fresh and interesting. This novel raises lots of important questions about life, love, and grief and I kept coming back to my thoughts on these topics for days after I finished reading. An interesting and engaging story!

Losing a child. It's the nightmare that no parent wants to consider. Please, please, let nothing happen to my child. PLEASE.

But it does happen, and the grief, the loss, must be beyond imagining. How do we keep that child in our lives, in our hearts, active and alive even in loss? Can we control how we grieve and bear that loss?

Gayle Forman explores this topic, as well as loss through the prism of other relationships, both immediate and tangential.

These questions were front and center as I tore through After Life in two day's time. Occasionally brought to tears, I read with interest to see what would happen, how people and events might intersect, etc. I appreciated the Afterword and the author's own insights therein.

Four stars.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for an ARC of After Life in exchange for an honest review.

It could just be that I’m feeling a bit more sad today than usual but this book had me in tears at the end. Foolishly I believed that Amber was truly back from the dead. Perhaps it’s simply something I wish could be true. All I know is I was hooked in the story, in the sadness, in the hope, the regrets, in the message. With several months to go before the year ends, I can’t say for certain but this book is a clear contender for my favorite book of the year.

I cannot articulate how beautiful this story is and how much I needed it and how many of my students are going to love it. I’ve been a Gayle Forman fan since “If I Stay” and it’s always one of my go-to’s for patrons. “After Life” will be added to that list. The way the words weave through grief are both beautiful yet tragic. A waterproof mascara and Kleenex warning needs to be issued with this book. Readers will want a hot cup of tea as they shift between friends, family, first love and glimpses into what it’s like when the world keeps moving even after ours has stopped.

This book is about life after death and how someone's life and passing can affect those left behind. Seven years after she died, Amber Crane comes home like any other day. Only after her mom sees her and starts screaming does Amber realize something is wrong. Through the unfolding of events in this book, we explore how grief and the passing of someone can affect a person, whether they were close to that person or not.

This book is a great example of what the author is good at. We follow different people throughout the book and, though it can be a little confusing at times, the author pulls it all together beautifully in the end. Gayle Forman hit it out of the park once again and I would highly recommend it to everyone, especially anyone who has experienced grief. This book is in the young adult genre and is a quick read, but doesn't read too young. It's heartwrenching, complex, and makes you think afterward.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Wonderfully written. After Life challenges thoughts and feelings about grief. This is raw and very emotional, but absolutely phenomenal.

Wow. Very powerful. It was a super easy read which I loved, and packed a powerful and emotional punch. I thought the ending was going to be completely different and I was surprised to discover I was completely wrong lol. And because I was so wrong, what I took from it was completely different from what I anticipated. I enjoyed the multiple povs and how everything came together. Really made me think about life, death, memories, and how I want to conduct myself as a human while I’m here. The imprint I want to leave.

It's been a very long while since I gave a book 5 stars, because normally I like books well enough but it takes a lot to get me to say I loved a book. This one was borderline for most of the read, but what tipped the scale was the fact that I actually got a little teary eyed towards the end of the story. Sure, there was also a bit of too convenient, but if I'm moved to feel something that strongly, then I will say it's worth bumping up when I'm on the fence.

This is a bit different from Forman's other works, in that it is not really focused on any romance. But it's still in the same style and still deals with a teen coming to terms with who she was and who she wants to be. Just that she's doing it from a place after her death.

The story moves well. The back and forth from POVs give some hints as to what is to come, and also what happened in the past. There were a lot of different narrators, and it took me a bit to get into that, but it worked overall and you didn't feel like anyone was not developing as a character because of the flip flops.

I genuinely enjoyed all aspects of Amber's story. And I truly felt for those around her and for her of course. There is a bit of a mystery in the pages, but nothing disturbing. Just a story about a girl who was, for all intents and purposes, a pretty normal girl who died early but under pretty normal circumstances.

If you like Foreman's style and are looking to step away from the traditional teen romance for something with a bit more of a fiction flare, then this is it.

this book was really nice, and it was a interesting take on how grief manifests for different people.

When I saw this book on NetGalley I was very intrigued since I’ve read quite a few books by Gayle Forman. The description fascinated me since I’ve always been curious on what happens in the after life. I loved this book, it’s very real and raw and something different from what I’ve read before. This book is about Amber Crane who passes away after getting hit by a car on her way home from school. It talks about what happened to her family and how grief impacted them in different ways. For some people Amber and her presence stayed with them close by, for others they shut down her memory to avoid the pain, and for others who didn’t know Amber very well find meaning in her death. For anyone who has lost a loved one or even if you haven’t I would highly recommend this book! 5 star rating for me! Thank You NetGalley, Harper Collin’s Children Books, and Gayle Forman for an early copy of this ebook in exchange for my honest review! Publishing date of January 14, 2025.

After Life is the story of a Amber who returns home after being killed in a bike accident 7 years earlier. She finds her family and friends very different than when she left - broken and still grieving. The way Forman told the story using different timelines allows readers to understand how grief impacts each person differently. At the risk of sounding morbid, I think this book is intriguing because at some point most of us have wondered, what will happen to the people I care about if I die?

I absolutely love this author and everything she writes. This book....I devoured like all of her others. Thank you so much for the ARC!

Book:
AFTER LIFE by Gayle Forman
Thank you Netgalley and HarperCollins for the Arc (Jan 14, 2025)
Review:
4⭐
I haven't read a book by Gayle Forman since IF I STAY and its sequel WHERE SHE WENT. Knowing how emotionally riveting those two were, I knew I needed to read this one.
AFTER LIFE takes the reader on an emotional roller coaster of life, death, grief, and everything in between. The book is about Amber, who died in a bicycle accident. Years later, she shows up like it never happened, though everyone else lived through the years she was gone. She's frantic to get her life back.
This book is a whirlwind of a read. It's told across multiple points of view and multiple timelines that get confusing at times but is much needed in order to know how the loss of Amber affected those around her.
This book was such a quick read, never stirring from the rawness of grief and how hard, how much someone has to change in order to move on. There were times where I felt my heart break for Amber when she came back, where it broke for her family and friends. I recommend this for anyone who enjoyed Forman's other works, or just needs a reason to cry.

What I Liked About It:
*the amplitude of emotions expressed
*the mystery behind Amber's accident

I have loved Gayle Forman forever!

This book is just as great as her others. What a fabulous story about life, after life, living, and dying. it's a story about family, friends, and ties that bind (or don't).

Forman is a master at taking story threads and weaving them into a tapestry full of themes readers can take with them.

I was skeptical of a few plot moves early in the book but it all comes together. I couldn't stop reading!

Would recommend to YA lovers, mystery enthusiasts, and readers interested in one perspective of life after death.

I haven't read a Gayle Forman book in a long time, but it was easy to sink back into her writing style and character's voices after all this time. I thought this book, overall, was so, so lovely. I enjoyed the short chapters and characters, and the themes of dying/death/living/grief. It was a very moving book. I didn't quite love everything plot wise (things felt a little too easy at the end), thus the 4 stars and not 5. But this felt like an old school 2010's YA book and I appreciated the heck out of it.

Gayle Forman is one of the first YA authors that I began to follow many years ago. Her books are unique and heart wrenching. In this book Amber a seventeen-year-old girl is killed while riding her bike home from school. The story begins 7 years after the incident when she walks into her home not realizing that she is dead. Don't be fooled though because this is not your typical ghost story. Her mother, sister, and father all react differently when they see her, and she is shocked at the brokenness of those that she left behind. The puzzle pieces of what happened to her are threaded through the story as it is told through a variety of POV's. This is a story about loving, loss, and hope. I couldn't put it down and highly recommend it for readers of all ages.

I knew the name of this author sounded familiar. She wrote IF I STAY, a YA book which I know was very popular and spawned at least one sequel and I definitely read the first one, though I don’t remember much about it.

So, here, one spring day Amber, a seventeen year old arrives home from school on her bike. Her mother sees her and screams.

Because Amber died seven years ago, hit by a car while riding that bicycle.

Amber remembers nothing, but seven years have passed for everyone else, her parents, sister, boyfriend, friends….

There’s a lot to unpack here, and you have to keep in mind this is YA, so while Amber doesn’t eat or go to the bathroom or anything, no one is too concerned about this, and she basically acts like a typical seventeen year old and is all about her high school boyfriend, which, of course, is nuts, but, hey, teens!

Melissa, the sister to end all sisters is probably the only smart person in this book. It’s definitely YA for YAs, but it’s an interesting concept, and it kept me reading, so the rating is more for a YA reader, not for an adult read. For an adult reader, three stars.

I thought "After Life" would be interesting, but didn't realize how compelling and heart-wrenching it would be. Through multiple timelines and POVs, Forman pulls the reader through the sharp edges and intimacies of loving and letting go of a loved one. Highly recommended. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.
Pub Date: Jan 14, 2025

#After Life
#NetGalley

Foreman takes grief and the way loss ripples around us in a way that remains true to the YA emotions and reality. I really enjoyed the mystery of Amber and swore I wouldn't cry. I made it about 95% before trying to read the ending through a flood of tears. Hands down, my favorite kind of ending.