Title: The Book of Love [on Amazon | on Goodreads]
Series: None
Author: Kelly Link [Site | Goodreads]
Genres: Afterlife, Supernatural, Mystery
Year: 2024
Age: 16+ (the protagonists are 18 and 17, and on the whole it's more of a NA book than a YA one...The dealbreaker here are the pretty graphic sex scenes, definitely more appropriate for an older audience, but I'm hesitant to call this an "adult" book because of the characters' age)
Stars: 5/5
Pros: Imaginative, inclusive, delightfully quirky. Populated by flawed, yet endearing characters who feel very real. Written in an apparently effortless, yet magical (and sometimes funny) prose.
Cons: Long (though never boring) - if you prefer your books to be on the shorter side. Contains brief but frequent bouts of (graphic) sex - if you'd rather read clean books.
WARNING! Some horror/gore. Death of a parent. Grief. Racism. Sexual content.
Will appeal to: Those who like a dark yet magical, cheeky yet tender small-town fantasy with coming-of-age themes.
Series: None
Author: Kelly Link [Site | Goodreads]
Genres: Afterlife, Supernatural, Mystery
Year: 2024
Age: 16+ (the protagonists are 18 and 17, and on the whole it's more of a NA book than a YA one...The dealbreaker here are the pretty graphic sex scenes, definitely more appropriate for an older audience, but I'm hesitant to call this an "adult" book because of the characters' age)
Stars: 5/5
Pros: Imaginative, inclusive, delightfully quirky. Populated by flawed, yet endearing characters who feel very real. Written in an apparently effortless, yet magical (and sometimes funny) prose.
Cons: Long (though never boring) - if you prefer your books to be on the shorter side. Contains brief but frequent bouts of (graphic) sex - if you'd rather read clean books.
WARNING! Some horror/gore. Death of a parent. Grief. Racism. Sexual content.
Will appeal to: Those who like a dark yet magical, cheeky yet tender small-town fantasy with coming-of-age themes.
Blurb: Laura, Daniel and Mo disappeared without trace a year ago. They have long been presumed dead. Which they were. But now they are not. And it is up to the resurrected teenagers to discover what happened to them. Revived by Mr Anabin - the man they knew as their high school music teacher - they are offered a chance to return to the mortal realm. But first they must solve the mystery of their death and learn to use the magic they now possess. And only two of them may stay. What they do not realise is their return has upset a delicate balance that has held - just - for centuries. (Amazon)
Review: First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to Head of Zeus for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.
I CONTAIN MULTITUDES
Every book whose synopsis promises dead/undead protagonists is guaranteed to have my attention - though I don't necessarily read all of them. But The Book of Love turned out to be much more than the story of three deceased teens who come back to life. For one, it encompasses a number of genres - building on its afterlife premise, it soon turns into a mystery, a supernatural fantasy with a magical-realism feel, and a strong coming-of-age narrative, while even incorporating a tongue-in-cheek, yet fond homage to romance novels. It's both dreamy and brutal, tender and acerbic, with messy characters you can't help but love and who feel like flesh and blood even when they're...something else. It's a love letter to music and writing. It touches upon/explores all kinds to familial bonds/relationships, even the strained ones (divorced/absent parents, sibling rivalries, your friends' friends whom you don't necessarily like). It's got queer and POC rep done right (also, "trans women are women" 👍), and it addresses racism in different forms (I particularly appreciated the discourse about publishing as a Black author in the typically white romance panorama. The book is set in 2014, but I'm afraid part of that still stands). At the end of the day, if this novel does incorporate a few familiar tropes (some of them slightly Buffy-adjacent), it spins them into an imaginative story that's much bigger than the sum of its parts. [...]