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Book Summary and Reviews of After Life by Gayle Forman

After Life by Gayle Forman

After Life

by Gayle Forman

  • Publishes:
  • Jan 7, 2025, 272 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

One spring afternoon after school, Amber arrives home on her bike. It's just another perfectly normal day. But when Amber's mom sees her, she screams.

Because Amber died seven years ago, hit by a car while on the very same bicycle she's inexplicably riding now.

This return doesn't only impact Amber. Her sister, Melissa, now seven years older, must be a new kind of sibling to Amber. Amber's estranged parents are battling over her. And the changes ripple farther and farther out: Amber's friends, boyfriend, and even people she met only once have been deeply affected by her life and death. In the midst of everyone's turmoil, Amber is struggling with herself. What kind of person was she? How and why was she given this second chance?

This magnificent tour de force by acclaimed author Gayle Forman brilliantly explores the porous veil between life and death, examines the impact that one person can have on the world, and celebrates life in all its beautiful complexity.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"After Life proves once again that Gayle Forman is a master of both high concept and character. Full of grace and beauty, this book asks big questions about loss and grief, guilt and forgiveness, without ever straying from its true center: the unbreakable bond of sibling love. Forman weaves seemingly unconnected threads throughout the book, blurring the lines between fate and coincidence, until bringing it all together in a revelatory ending. I won't soon forget this one." —David Arnold, New York Times bestselling author of Mosquitoland

"After Life is a masterful tale about a family coping with loss, showing the way grief affects us and people we don't even know in ways we don't see. Once I met Amber and her family, I didn't want to let them go." —Brigid Kemmerer, New York Times bestselling author of Carving Shadows into Stone

"A moving, kaleidoscopic page-turner about love and regret, forgiveness and healing. From After Life's gripping first chapter, I couldn't put it down. Gayle Forman depicts the lives orbiting a tragedy with generosity, humor, and great humanity." —Nina LaCour, Michael L. Printz-winning author of We Are Okay and Watch Over Me

This information about After Life was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Gayle Forman Author Biography

Gayle Forman is an award-winning author and journalist whose articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, The Nation, and The New York Times Magazine. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. Her book If I Stay was adapted as a motion picture.

Author Interview
Link to Gayle Forman's Website

Other books by Gayle Forman at BookBrowse

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