"From the damp concrete of Vancouver to the spoiled shores of Mexico, After Elias braids the past with the present to tell a story of doubt, regret, and the fear of losing everything."
I have heard great things about this book - looking forward to reading.

𝟮.𝟱 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗦 𝗥𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗𝗘𝗗 𝗨𝗣

I feel mostly lukewarm about this book. I didn't absolutely love it and I didn't hate it in the slightest. I just wish we had focused more on the initial plot that was introduced in the beginning and less so on the avenues that we got surrounding that. In other words, I wanted more of the story of Elias and Coen and less of the ins and outs of Coen's family dynamics.

Coen kind of rubbed me the wrong way and I just felt like he wasn’t the main character I wanted him to be.

I could not get into this book, ultimately it was not form me and I could not finish it. It may be one for other readers

Thank you to the publisher for the copy - all opinions are my own.

This is such a beautiful and gorgeously written book. The mix of character drama and an element of suspense kept me glued to the pages. The pacing is on point, and I could not stop reading until I found out exactly how the story ends. A must read.

This was such a beautifully written emotional book, and dealt with some very hard hitting topics in a really sensitive way. I was captivated from the start and felt connected to the characters and the story throughout.

This book made my heart ache. It was sad and mysterious. Each character served its purpose. The running theme throughout of honesty and learning to love yourself, forgive yourself - and do the same with others - is just one of the reasons to pick up this book. This is a book that deserves more credit in the book community.

I requested this book because I loved the cover and the title but I wasn't ready for how hard was it going to be to read it, in fact it took me such a long time ti finally pick it up. My heart hurt with every single page, the anguish I felt was immense. Coen felt so raw, real and intense and the way the book is written made the feelings and emotions even more profound. I shouldn't read books this sad, my heart can't make it, nonetheless I know that when I read them, I'm going to love them even leaving a piece of my heart behind.
I really loved the book's prose; the author did an amazing job conveying grief, anxiety and truly all the emotions that made this book such an incredible little jewel everyone should read.

I want to thank Netgalley for giving me an advanced copy of this book.

this book has everything I like, it just really got an Impact in me, which made me love it more, I really want to keep reading things about this author

🕯 BOOK REVIEW 🕯

Synopsis: When the airplane piloted by Elias Santos crashes one week before their wedding day, Coen Caraway loses the man he loves and the illusion of happiness he has worked so hard to create. The only thing Elias leaves behind is a recording of his final words, and even Coen is baffled by the cryptic message.
Numb with grief, he takes refuge on the Mexican island that was meant to host their wedding. But as fragments of the past come to the surface in the aftermath of the tragedy, Coen is forced to question everything he thought he knew about Elias and their life together. Beneath his flawed memory lies the truth about Elias ― and himself.

Review: Wow. Just wow. This book took me on a journey. A predominantly character driven book (which we know are not my favourite) but WOW. The way the author conveys the MC’s thoughts and emotions whilst weaving in the storyline was absolutely incredible. This book also comes with LGBTQ and BIPOC representation and is own voices. There is quite a lot of time-hopping and it almost seems a bit excessive and unbearable, HOWEVER, I think it is ordered the way it is for many reasons and I wouldn’t change it at all. It just takes some getting used to.

Lovers of A Little Life will also enjoy this book, I think! Although on a much smaller scale and less intense, they carry similar themes and the way the author creates a sense of attachment to the characters for the reader is similar for both.

My sincerest thanks to @netgalley and @eddyautomatic for a copy in exchange for my review!

⚠️ Content warning for: death, attempted suicide, plane crash, depression, mental illness ⚠️

4/5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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AFTER ELIAS by Canadian debut author Eddy Boudel Tan promises from the start to be a puzzle: an airline pilot about to be married is killed in a crash and immediately pegged as the main suspect in the disaster. But this is no simple mystery, and the layered psychological struggles and revelations of Elias's grief-stricken fiance kept me furiously turning pages until the very end. With chapters that shift through time along with the narrator's emotions, a cast of very real but relatable secondary characters, and a haunting sense of the past, After Elias gifts the reader with gorgeous, economic prose and the pace of a thriller. I couldn't put it down.

Heartbreaking and beautiful, After Elias is a stunning portrayal of how the secrets we keep from those we love have power in indescribable ways. While painful in its reflections of a life lost, this novel reminds us to holds the ones we love close and to never miss an opportunity to give space for them to come as they are.

After Elias is not an easy read, but is richly rewarding for its depiction of dealing with insurmountable sorrow. To be honest, I'm a fairly fast reader, but with this book I had to take it slow. Coen's grief is not quite imaginable, and to me, that made for a unique reading experience.

Coen has just lost the man he was supposed to marry in seven days. That man, Elias, was the co-pilot on a jet airliner, that went down in the ocean. No one really knows what happened aboard that plane. With no survivors, perhaps no one will ever know the truth. With a not-too-discreet nod to the mystery of MH370, the author builds up the story - not necessarily of what could have led to the accident, but rather of the aftermath on the personal lives of the family members of one of the pilots - who, everyone is quick to label as the most likely suspect.

Told in - what's now become somewhat of a de rigueur - alternate chapters from the past and the present, albeit with one significant difference. The chapters in the past are not leading up to the crash. They seem to be going backwards in time, while the current storyline seems to be going forward - so you see two diverging timelines, both receding from the crash.

As the story progresses, you begin to see the underlying picture, behind the facades.

The writing is rich in emotion, while being reflective of the somber mood of the subject matter. One recent book I read, a YA storyline <b>The Light In The Lake</b> had it's own handle on a different-yet-similar kind of grief, and reading this reminded me, only slightly, of that. The best thing about <b>After Elias</b> is how its first person narrative of Coen allows you a glimpse inside the head of this grieving man. He is lonely, the loneliest man on that island, perhaps - for some time, the loneliest man in the world. And as you read on, you realize the author, through Coen, is leading you down a memory lane, and there's something at the end - that's quite something else.

Coen is all alone in the first half of the story, and you see him wandering around, confused, lost, sad, heartbroken, and he makes some new acquaintances and some new friends. Once his guests begin arriving, he is joined by his best friends - Vivi, Decker, and later on, by a surprise companion.

Towards the beginning, I kept having to stop reading every now-and-then, it was just too much to keep reading and imagining what Coen must be going through on that island. However, somewhere towards the half-way point the story reached a tipping point for me, and from there on, it was easy reading. Of course not because the grief disappears - it doesn't, in fact quite the opposite (!) - but as you get to know Coen and his coterie more and more, you find yourself in-step with him in his journey of self-discovery and realization.

Ultimately, there's a sense of growing up for Coen, and for some others as well. It is indeed heartening to see him find some sort of peace, or at least a purpose to go to, now that Elias is irrevocably gone.

Considering this is the author's debut work, makes this even more of an achievement!

Many thanks to NetGalley, Dundurn Press and Eddy Boudel Tan for providing a complimentary eBook for my honest review and feedback.

Coen decides to turn the wedding ceremony into a memorial for his groom when Elias dies in a plane crash the week they are to be celebrating. The cryptic last words of Elias haunt Coen, and he delves into Elias' past to find out why he never spoke of his family. Tan's tale of a past too hurtful to recall is heartwrenching as Coen learns more about Elias than Elias would ever have told him. I was fortunate to receive a digital copy of this wonderful story of a struggle to love from the publisher Dundurn through NetGalley.

Heartbreaking, moving story. Had not read anything by the author, and I was surprised. It is a well written book, with challenging topics, and filled wit hope. Quick and nice read!

I was compelled to stay with this to the end. It is sad in its way and yet the drama and suspense keeps you going. There is a plane crash that starts a series of questions, with emotional highs and lows and parts are reveled. Each revelations leading you along to more questions Relationships are key.

Emotional, poignant and evocative, Tan’s brilliantly written debut novel takes the reader on an emotional journey filled with love, loss, and healing from grief. Full of questions like “do we ever really know somebody? Do we even know ourselves?”–the prose expertly weaves the past and the present and pulls on the heartstrings with its wonderfully rendered characters. A beautiful!

A heartbreaking character study about what we know and what we will never know about the ones we love. The depth is there and while there is some pandering, the sentiment is powerful and remains.

By Google Translate !

I had already explained to you what prompted me to read in English, beyond the snobbery and my fierce desire to maintain a semblance of bilingual aptitude, I generally see it as an opportunity to read novels that are not or will not be. not published in French, and this is often the case for LGBT + genre literature which generally does not go beyond the door of its original publisher. So before the summer, while I was browsing NetGalley's North American catalog in search of the most anticipated books across the Atlantic, I was hooked by the beautiful cover of After Elias, before discovering in reading the summary that the main characters were a couple of men.

Coen and Elias have been in a relationship for eight years, live together in Vancouver in English-speaking Canada and are about to put the ring on in a few days, on a paradise island off the coast of Mexico, where Elias is from. While Coen is already at the hotel to finalize the final preparations for the wedding with the organizer, Elias travels the world on the plane of which he is co-pilot. Everything will change when on the television in the hotel bar, he sees on a news channel that a plane connecting Europe to Vancouver has crashed into the sea.

I was frankly taken aback by the initial reaction of the character, ultimately quite calm, which does not collapse with a lot of screams, life over, things like that. Coen decides to stay on the island and continue the festivities with the guests to come, turning this non-refundable wedding into a celebration of the life of Elias, who just passed away. The hotel staff is worried, his friends, his parents, everyone asks him to come back, to cancel everything, imagine him at the bottom of the hole: but no, Coen persists in his choice.

A final recording of a few seconds is broadcast by the Reykjavík control tower in Iceland in which Elias is heard saying a "pronto dios", which everyone understands as the farewell message from a suicide candidate, who is would be killed with hundreds of passengers, as was the case with this GermanWings aircraft in 2015, and whose story inspired the author. No one has any certainties, and yet this doubt is a formidable enemy which will come to throw a dark veil on this strange celebration which is announced.

I cannot reveal the ending, only tell you that it is really excellent and that I did not expect these last chapters. Coen grieves in his own way, supported by his family and best friends. The author, of which it is the first novel, intelligently alternates between flashbacks allowing to understand the history and the personality of each of them, and the days which follow the disappearance of Elias. A very beautiful novel about love, guilt, mourning. You can of course buy it in English in hard copy or as a digital book, but I especially hope that this book will one day catch the eye of a French publisher! Fingers crossed, as they say over there.

Thank you to Dundrum Press and NetGalley for the Reader's Copy!

Now available.

TW: Rape, assault

Aptly named, Eddy Boudel Tan's After Elias is a dramatic mystery that lingers long after the last page. Similar to Yanagihara's "A Little Life" in its dense, emotional style, the story focuses on Coen Caraway after he tragically loses his fiance just days before their upcoming wedding celebration. "Prontos dios" is the only message Elias leaves Coen. Grief-struck, Coen starts on a globe trotting journey to solve his lover's final mystery. Along the way, he is seduced by dashing billionaire Gabriel, banters with the ever witty Vivi and reconnects with his own family. An engaging read that will keep you guessing!

Elias and Coen are a gay male couple that had been together and they seemed happy for many years. They were both very excited to celebrate their destination wedding day in Mexico with family and friends. Their happiness was shattered when a tragic accident stopped the wedding.
As Coen tries to understand what happened and to handle his grief his close friends are there to support him. His family, not so much.
This is a love story that also proves that we can never really know another person completely. Sometimes secrets are just too devastating to discuss and to face.
This is a sad story but at the same time it is about life and carrying on in the face of tragedy and grief.