Thank you to Simon and Schuster/Aladdin, the author, and NetGalley for providing this eARC in exchange for an honest review. This book will be released on July 18, 2023.
Mal and his squad’s eternal grounding has lasted… significantly less than that, mostly because it’s been equally punishing for their parents, who have to supervise every time the kids want to hang out. Their freedom is granted just in time for the opening of a new shop called Glamourie, which quickly becomes Mal’s favorite place. Run by Morgan, a new resident from Faerie, the shop is a salon—which turns out to be perfect for Mal, whose new weekly appointments dazzle him up to alleviate the boring conformity of his new school. Unfortunately, his style has a side effect—older students start accusing him of trying to stir up Chaos with a capital C because of his trip to the mortal coil, and strange things have indeed been happening across Hell. Meanwhile, Cassandra has made good on her promise to hold an interdimensional mixer to foster better relationships between the powers, the heavenly angels, and others responsible for maintaining the balance. Everything comes to a head at the party, where it’s confirmed that a secret order is determined to help Chaos rise—and they’re willing to go to deadly lengths to do it.
I was so happy to be back and hanging out with Mal in this book. Afterlife is a very different kind of adventure than Grounded, and its pacing felt different, but I liked that—you really don’t want every book to have the same vibe! In this case, I appreciated it because one thing I wanted after reading the previous installment was more exploration of Hell as like… a domestic place. And the author delivered! I do think that a combination of not having a drastic location change until towards the end and the fact that the plot is a bit more puzzle-y than action-y this time around.
I think, as with last time, that my favorite thing about this book is the ordinary things the characters are experiencing in an extraordinary setting. Sure, people are suspecting Mal of being an agent of Chaos, but more importantly, he and his friends are going to different schools and making new friends, while he’s struggling with that and worried that they’ll drift apart. And making friends yourself is probably even more stressful when you’re an immortal being and you have a destiny you’re not 100% on board with yet.
While I’m glad we briefly got to see some of my faves from the previous book, the new characters are also great—Az is fun, and I like Zira, but more importantly, I love the more adult/godly characters that get introduced, like Morgan, Anubis, and Baron Samedi, and I am eagerly awaiting any scrap of news about book three, because I hope to see them again in the next installment!
Gabriella Crivilare 