Afterlife: Dark Fantasy Romance (Afterlife Saga Book 1)

Product Information

I've been meaning to write a review of this book for awhile because I don't understand why more people haven't read it. Listen - if you want to obsess over grammar and spelling then go find a kid and volunteer to proofread their essays and research papers. Geez! I did not find anything distracting about the grammar or spelling. Who knows, maybe all those errors had been corrected by the time I read it. What I did find was a great paranormal romance story. The female main character was not annoying to me. Does she sometimes make a bad decision? Yes. But if she was perfect in every way then this story would be boring. But it's not. I suppose I found her to be relatable, which is one of the reasons I enjoyed this story. This isn't like reading "Twilight." When she feels she is rejected she doesn't sit around and mope. Instead she dusts herself off and moves on. That takes strength in my opinion. I don't want to give too much away about the actual story, that's what a book description is for. I didn't know this was a series until I finished reading and it made me so happy! I read this book a second time because I felt like I needed to pay better attention to details I may have missed the first time around. But the main reason I read it again was because it was simply a great story that I could dive into. James Van Praagh has been conducting spirit communication and readings for over 25 years. In his book, he shares advice and personal stories from the departed who have used him as a medium.

Afterlife is the latest novel by author Julia Alvarez, a favorite writer of mine for many years. This is a beautiful book about not only loss, but loyalty and love and friendship and family. Most importantly, this is a story of how we can come to grips with loss and all of its consequences in one's life, and manage to go on. The Prologue in this unforgettable novel is one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking pieces of prose/poetry that I have read, as Antonia repeatedly asks, "Can you please help me find him?" We witness the fragmentation of Antonia's life as she comes undone as she desperately tries to put all of the pieces together once more. The first adult novel in almost fifteen years by the internationally bestselling author of In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents. Let's think about this for a second: If a friend thinks you are in danger, they keep you in the dark while trying to warn you. I don't know what kind of "friends" Hudson keeps, but that is not how a friend would behave.

Book Summary

Stephanie Hudson showed me again, that she is a fantastic author who not only has a brilliant world-building, she creates the most generating, heartbreaking and beautiful scenes. She creates a romance that makes you want to cry of happiness and you can practically FEEL the aches and love. And she creates the most amazing fight scenes. You really do get transported into this world of Demons and Angels and...well..Draven, who is a mix of both - the King himself. And he is truly magnificent! :)

I Have just read a 500 something bloody book in a day!!!! i have cooked with said book in my hand changed my kids nappy and ironed It. Was. So. Slow. I kept waiting and waiting for something to happen--just a little further, surely we're almost there . . . but NO. Never.

Four Facts About Near-Death Experiences (NDEs)

There are moments when somebody is passed out in your garage and you have to do something,” says Alvarez. “You can’t just say ‘This isn’t my business.’ On the other hand, there is a sort of moral condescension that happens when you think you are going to manage the salvation of a person. It’s a balance, and not always an easy one.” Julia Alvarez has interwoven nicely the relationship of four sisters, the strain of what mental illness can have on family when one is ill, and the challenges of all of a sudden being on your own. This is a book that asks a lot of questions. What do we owe ourselves and others? How do we remake ourselves after the death of a spouse? Broken English. The phrase once leveled at her and her sisters. She mended her broken pieces and ended up teaching Americans their own language, four decades total, three at the nearby college. What now, now that she has retired?” I was introduced to this world by accidentally reading Transfusion before this one. As a matter of fact, I finished the THREE first books in the Transfusion series before I learned that I have in fact started several years into the future! haha

Protagonist Antonia Vega, originally from the Dominican Republic, is a retired professor of literature living in Vermont. She has recently experienced multiple losses, including the sudden death of her husband. Her three sisters arrange for a birthday gathering, but one of them, suffering from mental health issues, disappears. She is also asked to intervene in a case of an undocumented migrant worker. Could that possibly be what the aftermath amounts to: an eternity of remembering‘s? Over to you, Sam. She talks to him in her head. You always liked being the one to know. But the after life is changed him. He no longer seems interested in having the last word”. How much power does Antonia really have? She has lost her husband; her sister is missing. And behind those untimely losses, the timely ones, the whole flank of buffering elders, parents, tias, tios, who have died in the natural progression of things, but still, natural or not, they leave behind holes in the heart, places of leakage where Antonia feels the depletion of spirit, the slow bleed of chronic grieving. While death is inevitable for all of us, the way we think about death is deeply individual and personal. Your unique concept of an afterlife is just one of the things that make your experience of death special. This is my second read and to be honest it was like the first time, half of the story I completely forgot.Antonia Vega is newly retired and widowed, meeting both of life’s milestones on the same day. Having taught for over thirty years at the same Vermont college, Antonia pulls out a lifetime of authors and quotations to place meaning on the synchronization of these moments. Sprinkled throughout the text are quotes by everyone from Tolstoy to Kingsolver with a myriad of authors in between. Even though Antonia has lived in the same Burlington community for decades, she has been rooted to her job, her students, having no children of her own and playing the bad cop to her husband’s good cop. Now, Sam is gone, and her role nurturing generations of students young enough to be her grandchildren along with him. During each pause in her day, Antonia longs to communicate with Sam, believing that he is speaking to her, or, perhaps, part of her, during his afterlife. After a lifetime of marriage, perhaps this is just Antonia’s inner conscience guiding her through life so that she does not succumb to a world of grief. Without any children of her all Antonia has left are her quotations and haikus, and her sisters. Something very annoying that I noticed right from the start was that this author has a tendency to end an alarming number of sentences with an exclamation point! This over-use of exclamation points mostly applies to Keira during her internal monologues! This makes her seem like a thirteen year old drama queen, not an intelligent and artistic history major in her early twenties! Completely uncalled-for exclamation points are all over the place! I am not exaggerating! Sometimes they turned up at the end of a sentence during an actual conversation and then it just made the characters sound stupid! It was like following a conversation between two extreme idiots! Historically, children have presented some of the most compelling evidence of life after death. In Closer to the Light , Dr. Melvin Morse presents interviews with hundreds of these children, each of whom was once declared clinically dead. Whether you believe in life after death, near-death experiences, and the afterlife or not, the books above are exciting and rewarding reads. When you read about life after death, you learn more about yourself and how you perceive death. She is supposed to be a young woman, but from her conversation you get the feeling that she is twelve.This happened because the author aimed for naivety, but overshot, and got stupidity. Small example. - She meets some girls at college, escorted by the most popular guy around, that is giving her his undivided attention, and the girls are giving her an evil eye. She says that she doesn't understand why. The author wanted to portray that her character is above the usual social and gender grouping, and the conflicts that come with them, as an individual that is so blissfully selfless and unaware of her physical appearance. Then a few chapter's later, she describes Cassie as being hormonaly overcharged, as she ridicules her 'slutty' behavior. So, she understands, but is just playing stupid. All for our benefit? Gee, thanks...you shouldn't have....

The first adult novel in almost fifteen years by the internationally bestselling author of In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents The plot itself was just really flawed and not engaging at all, to the point where I didn't want to finish reading but forced myself so I could write a review based on the whole of the book. It was confusing at times, as in you could not see the plot going anywhere, it just sort of floated around. The discovery of who Draven was was left really late in the book, despite all the signs being there. The story about Keira/Catherine escaping from a stalker who kidnapped her felt like it was thrown in at the last minute and it wasn't properly embedded in the plot. The whole idea that Keira could see weird demons and stuff was just confusing and didn't add to the story. Afterlife” reflects Alvarez’s desire to define the chasms between us and then help her characters leap across. Already mourning her husband’s death, Antonia Varga faces two further struggles that drive the novel. For one, her neighbor’s undocumented farmhand Mario asks her to help him assist his fiancée, Estela, to travel from Colorado to Vermont. Antonia finds the hugely pregnant Estela sleeping in her garage. Antonia Vega is an immigrant writer and recent retiree who loses her husband suddenly. As life often is, more stressful events pile on, and Antonia is more lost than ever. She often turns to books and writing for comfort, but even those aren’t helping her now. In The Lovely Bones , we experience the pain and loss of Susie’s family as they hunt for their daughter’s killer. We also get a peek into life after death, with Susie’s version of the afterlife.Antonia's neighbor sends over one of his farm hands, Mario, with ladder in hand to clean her gutters. Antonia listens intently as Mario tells her of his girlfriend, Estela, who will be arriving by bus from Colorado. He asks for some assistance from Antonia to get her safely here in Vermont. Antonia takes a step forward into something that she never bargained for. But dabbling in the needs of humanity may just open a section of her heart that's been closed for business. Antonia internally wonders what she is to do with her new life. Is she to remain who she was or is she to embody the people who are no longer with her, the ones she loved, and behave as they did?