Maybe it’s the emo kid in me, but my favorite sapphic romances are the ones that break my heart and make me cry before putting me back together with a well-earned happily ever after. One such book that I recently enjoyed is Afterlove by Tanya Byrne. This story about the enduring power of love played with my emotions in the absolute best way.
On a school field trip, Ash Persaud meets the girl of her dreams in Poppy Morgan. The two girls hit it off instantly and soon fall head over heels for one another. Tragedy strikes, though, when Ash is suddenly killed in an automobile accident on New Year’s Eve. As the last person to die that year, she becomes a grim reaper, tasked with finding lost souls and ferrying them to their final resting place. One of the rules of being a reaper is that Ash cannot visit those who knew her in life, because if they recognize her, they will soon die. When Poppy sees Ash one night and immediately recognizes her, the two have to decide whether to run away from this second chance or embrace it, no matter what it might mean.
Afterlove is an emotional rollercoaster that will hit you over and over again with the highest emotional highs and the most devastating emotional lows. The highs come first with the first third of the book focusing on Ash and Poppy’s relationship. It was such a heartwarming experience seeing these two young girls fall into love so quickly and so hard. Byrne’s writing really shines here as she perfectly captures the overwhelming flood of joy that comes when you find someone who makes every moment with them feel special. You really get a strong sense of how much Ash has fallen for Poppy and it makes you want nothing bad to ever happen to them.
Of course, because it’s a book about death, you know the bad is coming. Luckily, Byrne does a good job teasing the moment while also keeping you on your toes. You know it’s coming, but you’re not sure how. When Ash does shuffle off her mortal coil, it hits with devastating intensity both in terms of its suddenness and in Ash’s inability to accept it. Those moments are such a gut punch, and you really do feel for Ash.
Balanced between the elation of Ash and Poppy’s first months together and the tragedy of Ash’s death is the beautifully bittersweet third act of the book. Ash and Poppy’s second chance is this perfect balance of joy at their reunion, sadness at what it might mean, and hope that their love will endure. Tanya again did a great job delivering on these emotions as well as the story’s key theme of love’s power over death. I spent most of the final few chapters tearing up and when I finally set the book down, I had to sit there and have a good cry before I could go about my day.
Despite how much I liked the story, there are some aspects of Afterlove that did not work for me. The second act got a little bogged down with its pacing and felt a little too slow at times. I feel like Dev and Esen, Ash’s fellow reapers, could have been better developed. I liked what I saw of those two characters, I just wish I could have gotten to know more about them. Lastly, the fact that the prologue re-appeared almost verbatim during the second act annoyed me as it felt like a missed opportunity to do something different with that particular story beat.
Afterlove is a perfect example of a young adult romance that will tear your heart apart and then mend it back together again. It’s a book about love and death and how the former will always be more powerful than the latter. As I told my wife, it’s the sapphic book version of Death Cab for Cuties “I Will Follow You Into the Dark”. If you’re an emo girlie like me who likes their romances with a heaping helping of tears, then you can’t go wrong with this one.
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