WHAT COMES AFTER

A teenage girl who’s used to fending for herself dies on her way to the SATs and realizes that her life has only just begun.

Mari Novak can’t remember a thing about how she died. She’s landed in a nondenominational purgatory called Paradise Gate, where she’s tasked with resolving her unfinished business before she can “ascend” to whatever lies beyond. Unfortunately, Mari’s sharing an apartment with her unfinished business: her flighty mother, Faye, who predeceased her by only a few weeks. There’s a lot about Paradise Gate that seems off—it’s packed with influencer-esque “soul models,” who are trying to get fast-tracked to ascension, and Mari has to pay rent with the points she earns by doing homework assignments—but she’s determined to keep her head down and move on as quickly as possible. That’s easier said than done, however, as she struggles to confront the truth of her death and the deep pain she and Faye caused each other in life. Mari’s tentative romance with loner Jethro is less compelling than the thorny mother-daughter dynamic and accompanying slow road to forgiveness that give the narrative most of its heft. Everything wraps up a little hastily, but the twin mysteries of Mari’s death and the truth of Paradise Gate will keep readers invested. Faye and Jethro are implied white; Mari, who knows nothing about her father, is racially ambiguous.

An intriguing examination of the things that keep us trapped—postmortem or otherwise.