Daria Lavelle's Aftertaste is a rich tapestry of love, loss, and culinary delights. The story beautifully intertwines the protagonist's personal journey with her passion for cooking, creating a sensory experience that is both heartfelt and delectable. Lavelle's descriptive prose brings each dish to life, making the reader's mouth water. The emotional depth of the characters adds a profound layer to the narrative, making it a truly satisfying read. This novel is a feast for the senses and the soul.

Huge thank you to Simon & Schuster for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

The book’s premise is simple. What if you could share a meal one last time with someone you’ve lost? What would you do for that one last meal?

The first 20 pages of this I knew it was going to hurt in the best way. I knew there were going to be tears. And there absolutely were, in the best way possible. This book is beautiful. The loss in Konstantin’s life drives him to what makes him unique. A way to bring back the dead for one last meal, so the living can heal and let go. It’s the Aftertaste that brings your soul (and theirs) to peace. Or does it? Everything has a cost, even Aftertastes. Are you truly willing to pay?

I mean, damn. Right. In. The. Heart.

I tell you, I never ran to preorder this book faster. This belongs with the precious few others that are in the “change your life after you read” category. And this one? It’s skyrocketing to the very top.

Run, don’t walk and get yourself a copy on May 20. I tell you, no…I guarantee you will not regret it.

Perfect for fans of Ghost Whisperer and Top Chef, Daria Lavelle’s Aftertaste tells the story of Konstantin, or Kostya, a Ukrainian-American man living in New York, who is more or less drifting through life for the past twenty years since his father’s untimely passing. It is after his father’s death that Kostya develops the ability to taste the food of the dead that they have a strong emotional attachment to, a phenomenon he calls “aftertastes”. When one day while working at a bar, Kostya inadvertently discovers that he can temporarily summon spirits from the afterlife for a final goodbye by recreating the aftertastes that grace his tongue. This prompts Kostya, along with his chef best friend Frankie, to open a restaurant dedicated to giving people the ability to find closure with those they’ve lost, something Kostya himself has been dreaming of having with his own father. But dealing with the dead, especially Hungry Ghosts, is not as simple Kostya would hope, and soon discovers that the best way to love someone is to let them go.

Daria Lavelle has really crafted an emotionally potent novel with an intriguingly unique premise, smooth pacing, a main character whose battle with grief and anxiety is one that speaks to a wide audience. The themes of food as a love language and learning how to forgive oneself are quite touching, and the romantic plot of the novel is intense in a way that doesn’t feel rushed or undeserved, making the conclusion all the more gut-wrenching in its beauty.

I loved this book! The premise is so unique and I found the writing to be really engaging. I was shocked to find out that this is a debut novel. It was well written and made me reflect on my own grief in ways I had never thought about before. I already know this is going to be a favorite of 2025 and I am so glad I got to read it a little early. Fair warning - this book will make you hungry, so proceed with caution!

This won't be to everyone's ....taste 👀 but I thought it was brilliant, such a unique concept and it was executed beautifully, thought provoking and evocative!

I don't recall ordering this book, but I was willing to give it a try. It sounded interesting, and I enjoyed how the author described the food that this young man was tasting. I could picture it. Things went along, and this young man tried to figure out why he had this unwanted gift. He consults a woman with tara cards, and they try to make sense of his tastes.

I was having a hard time connecting to the situation; I also didn't want to read about suicide and more about death.

I stopped reading after three or four chapters! I just couldn't finish!

Absolutely loved Aftertaste! It tugged at my heartstrings. Will definitely be a forever favorite. I will be recommending to everyone!

Such a unique premise. As a psychic shares thoughts, Stan can feel ghosts through taste. He helps people connect with loved ones lost through creating and having them share a food that he can taste in their presence. Yet, the impact of that is beyond what he could imagine. On the way, he is mourning the loss of his dad when just a child. Really enjoyed this read!!

A huge thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this arc in exchange for an honest review! WOW!!!
This book is unlike anything I have ever read! The concept while incredible is so emotional and unique! What would you do if you had the chance to have a meal with a departed loved one and have a peaceful farewell with them? I think that it is safe to say that we would all want that chance.
Kostyra is a young chef who can taste the cravings of a spirit. When he prepares these after tastes he is shockingly able to summon the spirit to meet with the loved one. He sets out to give closure to these loved ones as he wished he could have closure with his own father who passed away when he was a child.
It is a story of love and grief and the comfort of good food. The author writes with a sense of originality, sorrow, romance and even peace. These characters carve a place in your heart that will leave you in tears. I cannot wait to see what else this debut author has in her soul for the reader.
Magnificent! The culinary descriptions were exquisite as well! Run and get this book which I will now purchase for my forever collection! Just beautiful!!

This masterpiece is unquestionably one of the best books of the year. Who am I kidding? It’s one of the best things I’ve ever read! It explores the soul’s hunger, the kind of love that consumes you like a craving for salt, the deep, piercing pain of grief that stabs both heart and soul, and the bittersweet taste of life, love, and unfinished business.

At its core, it begins as the story of a grieving boy—Konstantin Duhovny—who idolized his father, only to have their last exchange be filled with words he can never take back. Immigrating from Ukraine, struggling to adapt to life in the States, ten-year-old Konsta not only loses his father but also his mother, who becomes a shell of herself, bedridden and neglecting her son as if she is the only one grieving.

One day, as he sits alone by the pool, watching other children with their fathers, he suddenly tastes his father’s favorite liver dish on his tongue. Could this be his father’s way of reaching out? What if he recreates the dish—could it serve as a bridge, a way to communicate, to apologize? But when he shares this discovery with his mother, her reaction is devastating—she sends him to a mental ward. Realizing he must keep his ability a secret, Konsta embarks on a journey, working his way up from dishwashing in Michelin-starred restaurants to becoming a sous chef, all in pursuit of mastering his father’s dish. He has managed to connect with spirits through food before, but when he experiences a crushing personal loss and meets Maura—a purple-haired clairvoyant who warns him against tampering with the boundary between life and death—he is faced with an impossible choice. Should he continue cooking for those who seek closure, risking the delicate balance between the living and the dead?

The ending left me shattered. This novel is a unique fantasy gem, a lyrical, soul-stirring literary masterpiece that lingers long after the final page. It’s the kind of book that deserves to be shouted about from the rooftops! I, for one, will be doing just that—preferably while nursing my favorite whiskey cocktail. A stunning debut from Daria Lavelle, and I cannot wait to devour whatever she writes next!

A heartfelt thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with a digital review copy of this marvelous book in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Although well written, this was not for me. There was a lot of skipping of the timeline, which is not my preferred book style.

What do you get when you mix The Bear, The Seven Year Slip, The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, and… Ghostbusters? Aftertaste by Daria Lavelle.

This books surprised me in so many ways, in the best ways. I expected a fun, quirky ghost story that had some fun restaurant scenes. What I got was a beautiful exploration of grief, self-doubt, life after loss, and how people connect through foods they share.

There were multiple times I thought I knew where the story was going, only to be surprised by a turn it took or a reveal made. I could not get over the way Lavelle worked in culinary lingo throughout the writing. It made me smile so much.

I have to admit, I’m 100% the target audience for this book. While I never made it to culinary school, becoming a chef was a longtime dream of mine and following the “food scene” is still a big part of my life. I love cooking and sharing meals with those I love, and so many of my memories revolve around food. So this book in particular felt like a love letter to my life. I especially related to Kostya’s relationship to food and memories with his dad - it’s how I feel about a lot of memories with my grandfather.

I love this book thoroughly. Thank you for the opportunity to read this ARC!

I almost gave up on this because the descriptions of growing up as a Ukrainian immigrant in Brooklyn reminded me too much of my ex-husband but I am so glad I stuck it out because WOW! The writing and the food descriptions were gorgeous. The emotions evoked by this book were strong and I found myself in tears a few times throughout. Such a wonderful testament to the power of food and it's connection to memory and emotion. The characters were endearing even at their worst. This is one of the best books I've read in a very long time.

Daria Lavelle’s “After Taste” was a great read. Though I usually avoid paranormal literature, this book captivated me from the start. The storytelling and concept were flawless, tackling grief with both heartbreak and uplift.

Kostya discovers that he can reunite people with their deceased loved ones—at least for the length of time it takes them to eat a dish that he’s prepared because he can taste a meal they had and recreate it. Food and spirits are the center of this story. As he brings people together with their loved ones, he creates a problem between the veil of the living and the dead.

This story is heavily centered on food, which I found to be unique for a ghost story. I enjoyed the character development and the story of the ghosts. However, as this is heavily based on food, I am unsure if it's for everyone.

In the end, I enjoyed the story and how it turned out. I am a foodie, so the food aspect of the story did not bother me, and I enjoyed that aspect.

Aftertaste
Daria Lavelle
Pub: 5/20/25
4☆

A food story to binge.
A ghost story to devour.
A love story to savor.

What if you could have one last meal with someone you’ve loved, someone you’ve lost?

This was such a unique and interesting read. I loved how Lavelle explored the powerful connection between food and grief. It was well written, perfectly paced, and the descriptions were so vivid I swear my mouth was watering throughout the entire book. I got completely caught up in Konstantin’s story but also took a side trip down my own memory lane felling all the feels and thinking about loved ones and what I wouldn’t give to share one last meal with them.

What I enjoyed;
✨ Heartwarming Story
✨ Darker Elements
✨ Restaurant/Chef Vibes
✨ Food/Grief Connection
✨ Afterlife Elements

A solid debut you wont want to miss. Thank you so much Simon Books Buddy for gifted exclusive preview edition and for the opportunity to be an early reader.

Thanks to NetGalley for this advance reader copy in exchange for a review. All opinions stated here are my own.
This book has such a great premise. What if you could connect with a deceased loved one by way of food? Reminiscent of Before The Coffee Gets Cold, you get the chance to see your loved one again but you only have the time it takes to finish your meal. I guess that’s where the similarities between the books ends.
Becoming a chef and conjuring dead folks is great until everything unravels. There’s a thriller element, a Russian mob, a love interest that’s not what she seems, and a host of hangry dead people threatening everything.
The author is very creative. The book slows a bit in the middle but the end is fast and furious. I thought I would have liked it more, but it gave me something to talk about as I shared it with my coworkers. Really unique.
A little more than 3.5 stars

A “dark comedy about food, ghosts, and the New York culinary scene,” Aftertaste by Daria Lavelle, will be published in May 2025 by Simon & Schuster. It's epic, vivid, memorable, fast-paced, and haunting.

Konstantin Duhovny at age ten does that terrible thing so many kids do, shouting some epithet at a parent in a fit of anger. Most kids get a chance to take it back, apologize, and atone. Not Kostya. As his father heads out the door to work without taking time to play a favorite game with him, Kostya thunderously tells him to go to the devil. It would be the last thing his dad would ever hear him say. Days, months, and years later, Kostya keeps telling himself his dad knew he hadn’t meant it, but the pain will keep lancing him “like a barb” all the days of his life.

How does any child overcome the guilt of those stinging last words? At what price will closure come, if ever it does?

Ukrainian-born author Daria Lavelle captures this haunting event in memorable and moving prose. She brings to life the hardships and personalities of this Ukrainian immigrant family. Somehow, along with all the gritty realism, Lavelle injects fantasy and magic, and we buy it.

The magic begins with Kostya at a swimming pool, suddenly tasting and feeling, in his mouth, the chicken liver with onions his mother had cooked for his father. Pechonka, Dad's favorite dish. The ghost of that dish, not its taste but its aftertaste, had been “spirited there by the person who most longed to taste it again.”

Weeks later, it happened again. And again. Aftertastes appeared like messages in his mouth. Different foods each time. Foreign. The ghosts sending him these messages won't leave him alone. When he tells his mother, she sends Kostya to the white-coats. He learns how not to swallow the pills, how to tell the doctors what they want to hear, how to lie his way out of the psychiatric ward.

He will never learn how to keep the ghosts from visiting him. On the bright side, they seem harmless, “mild mannered, even sentimental.”

Kostya “hallucinates” an amazing variety of exotic dishes, and he somehow knows exactly what’s in them. Walking in Times Square, stuck in traffic with his delivery job, any time, any place, he may get a fleeting aftertaste. Pork dumpling, hint of chive, hoisin, and rice vinegar, kick of spicy mustard.

He’s about the same age as Jesus when Kostya pulls off his first miracle. A difficult patron, drunk at the bar, asks for a drink at closing time. Kostya has no training as a bartender or a chef, but when the Aftertaste strikes, he mixes up the cocktail that will summon the lost loved one of this drunken patron. He even witnesses a dialogue between the man and his dead wife, who has materialized “in a million pinpricks of light,” illuminated in green. This stranger gets the closure Kostya has never gotten with his father.

The story line shifts into the fast lane, faster and ever faster, with mishaps and setbacks, as Kostya with his new cooking talent opens a portal. The bereft can eat the food their lost loved one craves, and they get to have one more conversation.

How does Kostya find the right ingredients to cook each dish? He’d never summon my grandpa’s garden tomatoes or beef from the cow he raised and butchered, but never mind the many slow-grown, slow-cooked foods we know to be unrepeatable: The premise is fantastical, yes, but grant the storyteller some artistic license, and the fun begins.

It’s fun at first, anyway. Sumptuous dishes are served, and lovely prose, with feel-good insights such as this:

– Kitchens were private places, where alchemy occurred, where sausage was made, where, once in a while, the divine was summoned and baked into a pie.

– A recipe could tell you who someone had been, what they had loved, the things that had sustained them. It was a way for others to carry them along, to bring them back, to keep them close once they had gone. A way to never really die.

– Food could do that. It could tell stories … Leaving behind a recipe as a way to be remembered and savored and loved even after you were gone. A way to live forever.

– What they make is fleeting–edible raptures that last only as long as it takes to consume them. But the recollection, the conversations about these morsels, the sweet nostalgia of the best things their clientele have ever eaten–those last forever.

It isn’t just good food that one might crave. The reasons for a food’s greatness “were as personal as a fingerprint.” What we eat doesn’t matter nearly as much has why. Some of us may form an attachment to food that is actually awful. Raman noodles can take us back to our college days. Ketchup and crackers your penniless mother smuggled from a restaurant might trigger the inextricable food link between the living and the dead. “But that was the thing about food you ate when you had nothing: the smallest things–warmth, crunch, calories, someone making it for you, taking care of you even if only in some small way, or making it yourself, proving that you could survive even when the world didn’t want you to–could make it the best thing you ever ate.”

The New York culinary scene with all its famed chefs may not have a clue what “comfort food” means, but Kostya does. His father “had been amazed by American eateries, by pizza parlors and diners and hamburger joints, by the idea, the thrill of it, a place you could sit and eat and still afford to pay rent after, where the food was good and fast and cheap, a holy trinity. This…is truly American. Everyone equal in pizzeria.”

Kostya meets the woman of his dreams, a medium named Maura, who eventually lets him down. Kostya's near-cliche of a mother may be a real piece of work, a woman who’d trade food stamps for cigarettes in Kostya’s hungry childhood, a woman whose phone calls he usually ignores, but she has some memorable moments in the book. I love her advice (with the Ukrainian accent):

“Sometimes the people you love hurt you. Sometimes they mean to. And sometimes they don’t mean, but cannot help. It is you who must decide to keep loving them anyway.”

Love your awful mother. Forgive your scheming girlfriend. Or not.

The plot thickens, terrible things happen, increasing numbers of “hangry” ghosts get out of control, and readers wanna know: Will Kostya make the ultimate sacrifice to restore order to the world of the living?

The answer surprised me.

No spoilers here. Let’s just say I love Kostya and even his awful mother, but I never liked Maura or her dead sister. That’s purely personal, so my opinions are irrelevant.

If you love expensive restaurants and gourmet chefs (I do not), this is your kind of novel. Me, I was skimming or speed-reading the recipes to get through what could have been a tedious slog.

The concept of foods we associate with our family and friends, and with certain places and phases in our lives: fantastic! Bravo! I love the way Lavelle brings it all to life.

Richly drawn characters, memorable, and endearing, caught up in a fast-paced plot that spins out of control and into the realm of fantasy, make this a worthy debut novel.

Thank you Net Galley and Simon & Schuster for this Advance Reader Copy.

I adored this book. It was dark, heartfelt, moving and emotional. I love the connection between food, relationships and memory. Beautifully written and well thought out.

Aftertaste is a novel like no other. It is about the love of food, that special person in your life that you never forgot about , and what would you do to reconnect with the afterlife. It follows Konstantin Duhovny a young boy struggling with the loss of his father and his mother's depression that keeps her in bed for days at a time. Kostya"s first Aftertaste comes to him after an incident at the public pool. The taste was the dish that his dad loved the most. After Kostya tells his mother about his father's Aftertaste she admits him into the hopital for mental illness. After getting out Kostya swears to not tell anyone about the Aftertaste again. As a young man working in a speakeasy bar as a dishwasher Kostya finds himself making a special cocktail for the only patron there. What happens next Kostya would not believe if he wasn't there to see it for himself. Charlie, the man at the bar struggling with the death of his wife, drinks the cocktail that was made for him and his wife slowly reappears. Once the drink is fully consumed his wife can move on to the other side. Now Kostya has to recreate his dad's dish to let him know how sorry he was the last time they saw each other. During this quest he stumbles in a job at a high end restrurant as a dish washer and soon works his way up the line. After that job ended very badly Kostya opens his own restrurant from his Hell's Kitchen apartment. Now Koysta has to make the choice to do the right thing with the afterlife or keep chasing the Aftertaste. I would like to thank both NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for letting me read an advance copy of this novel.