Afterlife (The Afterworld Saga Book 2)

Sandy
Goldsworthy
Genre: 
Young Adult

PARANORMAL:  Emma Bennett is eighteen and head over heels in love with her secret agent boyfriend, Ben Parker.  Ben works for the Afterworld's Bureau of Investigation, floating between the afterlife and earth, trying to juggle his job and his love life with Emma.  When things go wrong after a misunderstanding, Ben and Emma’s bond, which has spanned centuries, will be put to the test.  As they deal with this, Ben and Emma are caught up in an unfurling scheme that will threaten both their worlds.

Readers will quickly be sucked into Ben and Emma’s ‘meant to be’ relationship, and find themselves wanting to see the couple through their conflicts.  This is easily the strongest element of the story.  Otherwise, "Afterlife" is nearly impossible to read as a stand-alone.  The world building is not cohesively explained, leaving gaps in the narrative and creating a lot of confusion.  One example of the many: ‘hybrid beings’ seem to pose a threat to earth, but it really isn’t explained why this threat is so ominous.  One can assume this was all flushed out in the first book of the series.

It also doesn’t help when the story ends abruptly, not giving the reader any closure at all.  It definitely feels as though the reader opens up a book in the middle, with the first and last parts missing.  Readers will need to pick up the first and third book in this series to give this story a fairer assessment.    

MB Rose