Book Review - The After Wife

The After Wife by Gigi Levangie Grazer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was recommended to me by GoodReads. I was checking out what the site thought I should be reading based on my shelves and spied this cover among the others. It caught my eye. I'm a sucker for great cover art, and this one piqued my curiosity. I noted that it was about a widow, but I didn't read past the first few words in the description. I flipped tabs onto the library website, punched the title in and requested the book.

My husband, who works at the library system headquarters, brought it home the next day after a co-worker dropped it off at his desk. This is how most of my reading comes home, so everyone always knows what I'm reading, but that's neither here nor there. What I mean to be explaining is that I didn't know much of anything about this book before I plunged in. I thought it would be okay, but I didn't expect it to get to me the way it did.

Let me start off by saying that the start made me weep. And when I say weep, I mean the ugly cry. The one where your face is all red and you're starting to hiccup and the cat is prodding you to see if you're about to die, and you're looking for a paper towel to blow your nose in because you've used up all the kleenex. That kind of weeping. I was touched so incredibly deeply by not only the storyline, not only the loss of this widow, but about the relationship between the husband and wife before she became a widow.

Oh, it was so real. It was so me and my husband. It made me ache even at the thought of someone losing her partner in life so suddenly. I couldn't handle it.

But, really, though this book is about a widow, it's not about loss. It's about life. And talking to dead people.

See, I didn't see that coming either, how cool is that? I don't know if it's a spoiler or not because I still haven't read the back of the book, but I can't imagine that it is. It's what the bulk of the book is about. Because after being touched by death in a horribly immediate and intimate way, our heroine gains the remarkable ability to see and talk to the dead that inhabit our world along with us. And not just people, either. I'm talking horses that nudge her barista when she's trying to get a cuppa joe. I'm talking sweet little doggies in happy visions.

This is kind of cool. Once you make it past the part where it makes your heart feel like it's going to fall out of your chest, you start to smile. And even laugh a little. Because this shit is actually pretty funny. Can you imagine trying to get your career back on track after grieving the worst loss of your life, and at your first meeting, the room is full of dead people who want your attention? Oh, yeah it's black humour for sure, but if your sense of humour is wry and your appreciation of wit tends to the sharp side of things, you're going to love this book.

Much fun, and a quick read.

View all my reviews