Q: Have you read a book that made you cry lately?
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Under the Whispering Door
TJ Klune
Pub Date: 9/21/21
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So TJ Klune is on my favorite authors list for sure now. I have read so many of his books this year and have enjoyed all of them. They are so unique and I love them. I need to figure out what I haven’t read and read them lol.

This book was so fascinating about reapers, ferrymen, grumpy grandpas, the perfect tea, and a sweet love story.

I don’t know what happens when people die, if they disappear, if their spirit just floats above their body and they have to go to a tea shop to find their way. But 4 year ago when I held my Dad as he took his last breath then just stared at him because he looked so different, so empty all of a sudden and cold. I stared up at the ceiling smiling at it in case he was floating or hovering. I walked the halls of the hospital smiling and telling happy stories of him. I am such a nerd but I didn’t want my loving Daddy who never thought he did enough but always went above and beyond to think his pregnant baby daughter was upset. Even though I was in my 30s I was always the baby. He told me once that when he had a heart scare and we had to call an ambulance, that I was smiling and telling him everything was ok and I helped him to stay calm. He didn’t know how I was hyperventilating and having an inner panic attack. My gift to him on his sudden last day was to let him rest easy.

Stories like this give me hope that we get to see our loved ones again and even if we may not have gotten to do what we wanted or got bogged down by life and didn’t get to live a life that we should have maybe we get another chance in the afterlife. We might get to be who we want without all the societal norms and impacts and opinions. We can just be.

Also, thank you for saving all of those that live with fear and die by their own hands. Rewriting their narrative of where they go for their surviving loved ones. Fear is debilitating.

Thank you torbooks and netgalley for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.

Synopsis:

When a reaper comes to collect Wallace Price from his own funeral, Wallace suspects he really might be dead.

Instead of leading him directly to the afterlife, the reaper takes him to a small village. On the outskirts, off the path through the woods, tucked between mountains, is a particular tea shop, run by a man named Hugo. Hugo is the tea shop’s owner to locals and the ferryman to souls who need to cross over.

But Wallace isn’t ready to abandon the life he barely lived. With Hugo’s help he finally starts to learn about all the things he missed in life.

When the Manager, a curious and powerful being, arrives at the tea shop and gives Wallace one week to cross over, Wallace sets about living a lifetime in seven days.

Under the Whispering Door is a contemporary fantasy about a ghost who refuses to cross over and the ferryman he falls in love with.