I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Mari never gave much thought to the afterlife before her untimely demise, but she certainly didn’t think it would be an experimental wellness enclave called Paradise Gate—a place where the newly dead go to sort out the unfinished business of their lives. She also didn’t think the biggest problem to plague her in life would follow her into the great beyond: her also recently deceased mother, Faye. Mari quickly realizes Faye is her unfinished business, and in order to move on to whatever’s next, she’ll have to find a way to forgive her dysfunctional mother for being no mother at all. But there’s so much to forgive: never holding down a steady job, never having a stable home, and abandoning Mari in the end.

It’s a lot to sort through, but faced with the possibility of being turned out into the abyss, Mari gets to work. She enrolls in the prescribed self- actualization classes (think: journaling, positive self-talk, and lots of Youga™). It all seems pretty hokey, but still, the assignments force Mari to confront difficult truths about her past.

When a shocking revelation about Mari’s death captures the attention of the afterlife media, Mari is suddenly in the spotlight, her messy history being judged by the whole realm. She finds escape in an equally troubled boy, who takes Mari to an obscure part of Paradise Gate and introduces her to rebels who show Mari that this “wellness center” is not all it pretends to be. With classmates disappearing and an afterlife revolution brewing, Mari must decide whether to play it safe or break the rules. At stake? Her eternal fate. Literally.

Short and Sweet Review

Mari just died and now she’s in Paradise Gates, a place where the newly dead go to figure out their unfinished business. The only problem with being is Paradise Gates is her mother is also here and they’ve never had the best relationship. Mari doesn’t remember much about her death but she’s thinking she’s in Paradise Gates because of something that happened in her past and now she has to sift through everything. All of this is stressful and Mari ends up finding peace when she spends time with Jethro someone who also seems to be as troubled as she is. Over time Mari learns that Paradise Gates isn’t as great as it seems there’s a rebel group who’s ready to revolt and some of Mari’s classmates have gone missing.

I remember being excited about this book when I read the synopsis but from the time I read the synopsis to when I read the book was a few months. When I finally read to book it wasn’t what I thought it would be. I originally thought Mari would end up in Paradise Gates which is like an in-between and see her work through her unfinished business which seems to have something to do with her mother and then go to wherever she was meant to go. When Mari first comes to Paradise Gates she doesn’t really remember how she died but we see reporters looking through her memory archive and she soon becomes a martyr. We also see Mari reunite with her mother Faye with whom she has a strained relationship with. We get to see flashbacks and understand way Mari is so standoffish with Faye. More often than not Mari was more of a mother figure to Faye and with Faye as her mother Mari has gone through a lot. I was interested to see how their relationship would change in the afterlife but I found Faye to be frustrating as she didn’t seem to be progressing at all but at a standstill. We learn that in Paradise Gates people are required to take classes and other things that are considered wellness to rack up points and eventually ascend within 90 days. Mari befriends Larisa who happens to spend a lot of time online and in chat rooms and is kind of into conspiracies. I found this book to be long and boring and I felt like it took me a long time to finish it. This book reminded me of The Good Place, but there wasn’t a lot of interaction with the chairman. For me this book took a left turn when it started to involve all of the rebel groups and things of that nature and I was really trying to figure out what was going on. I found the missing people plot line interesting but there were so many different plot lines going on here that I just couldn’t wrap my head around it at some point. Mari as a character was okay, I thought she started off great she was smart and had ambition but towards the end of the book she had a decline and I found myself disliking her and not caring what was going to happen to her.

Overall, I just don’t think this book was for me and I found myself thinking the whole time reading this book that I thought it would be something else. The tone changed a lot through out the book I feel like the author didn’t even know what lane this book wanted to be in. The concept was interesting getting to seeing Mari work through things that happened in her life but I found that her character development took a wrong turn. I personally didn’t click with this book but I could see others enjoying it.