I found myself confused when reading this book and never finished it. Perhaps people of colour refer to each other by using the "N-word" at the beginning/end of almost every sentence, but in my world nobody uses that word and (frankly) I found it offensive. I tried, but found this story difficult to follow and not very realistic. I hesitated to write this review because I do not normally stomp on someone's work. Ii will not be recommending this book and totally understand my review being discarded. Thanks.

⭐️

If you read The Coldest Winter Ever and loved it, chances are you won’t love this sequel. All the reasons I loved the original story are absent from this story. Winter made so many mistakes before, but I couldn’t fault her because she was a product of her upbringing and she was young. I loved her character. She was so strong-willed.

However, in Life After Death, I couldn’t connect with any decision she made. It was beyond my understanding. She was not the powerful woman I knew her to be. She was weak. Instead of going around on adventures try to find a footing, she was being whipped around without any agency in her situation.

In the Coldest Winter Ever, Winter’s story was so real. In Life After Death, as the title suggests, the story takes place in the afterlife. That was a little too out there for me. I was immediately like wait, what?!

Based on what I’ve read online, this was Sister Souljah’s attempt at breaking down stereotypes about Islamic people being terrorists and at showing how peaceful they truly are. I could get behind this message, but whatever her intention was, this book was not the best approach for it. Her message was very unclear. The story was confusing and unstructured and the details were repulsive.

I’m just so confused why anyone would choose this avenue of vulgarity to prove anything and why anyone would agree to publish it.

This book had so much unnecessary vulgarity. I don’t know why I put my poor mind through that.

I’ve never felt so strongly about my dislike towards a book.

TW: drugs, rape, beastiality, pro-life, anti-semitism, devil-worship (probably a lot more that I’m trying to erase from my memory).

Winter Santiaga returns in this sequel to The Coldest Winter Ever. She's completed her time served, is still stunning, bold and loves her father more than ever. She's eager to get a new start, with a fashion line and interior design business, and reclaim the empire that her father had built. But Simone, has other plans for Winter's future. Will she blow Winter’s head off? Or will at least one bullet blast Winter into another world? Either way Winter is fearless. Hell is the same as any hood and certainly the Brooklyn hood she grew up in. That’s what Winter thinks.

OK. That was not expected. When I read the title, I thought it was metaphorical since she's coming back to life in a way after 15 years in prison, but actually, she is shot dead in the first few pages and we follow her on her crazy journey to the "Last Stop Before the Drop" i.e. purgatory where she can decide if she wants to go to heaven (by accepting Allah as the ONE, huh?) or to hell. It was all very confusing and random and there didn't really seem to be a storyline? It was like peering into an author's mind when they are deciding where the story should go but in this case, this was where the story went?! Unfortunately, I did not get to see any of Winter's redeeming qualities at all, and she just disgusted me in this book. There wasn't much that I enjoyed, unfortunately. I'm also wondering if I'm so confused that I'm missing the deep message and symbolism? But if it's there, it's very obscure. I almost DNF but I don't have any urgent NetGalley deadlines so I pushed through.

CW: rape, bestiality, drugs, alcohol, homophobia and probably more that I've blocked out of my memory.

Thank you NetGalley for this copy of Life After Death by Sister Souljah. Unfortunately, I read the first ten pages of the book and stopped. I could not get into it. Maybe my preference for those specific books have changed. But I know it definitely did not keep my attention. I was looking forward to this book so much when I first heard about it and but was very disappointed once I received it and started reading. I gave it 1 star, I be guess Sista Souljah tried. (Honest opinion)

Thank you #NetGalley for the ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.
It took me a long time to start this book and to be honest I didn’t finish it (DNF around 20% in). I just couldn’t get over the language and there wasn’t much of a plot in my opinion. I’ve also never read the first book in the series which might have made it a bit less confusing at first.

I tried REALLY hard to keep reading and picked up the book several times but ultimately I didn’t like the book, and didn’t find the lead character likeable, and relatable.

Thank you to Netgalley and the author for giving me this ARC to read for an honest review. I wanted to love this book but I DNF'd the book which i find hard to do for an ARC but I could not get past about 30%. I was not interesting, thought provoking or anything. It was odd.

This book, sadly and heartbreakingly, was such a huge disappointment. I love this author. I love the story of the family but this? It was like the author had two books but was allowed to publish one so she meshed them together. The part where we follow the character we all fell in love with years ago- the writing was there. You could feel it and it could’ve been so very brilliant. But the part where she goes to hell or wherever it is well it was hell. I’ve never struggled so bad to finish a book as I have this. Those parts of the books I found myself just skipping big chunks to get back to the story. I think the author was trying to push her understanding of the Quran on to her readers and I love learning about new things but this I think will turn more people away then bring them together. It was a nightmare of words, ideas and I honestly can’t tell you what I read but unlike her other books it will never be re-read.
I’m thankful I was given a copy to read for free by the publishers because if I had paid for this I’d be asking for a refund.

Another intriguing story. Once you begin , there is no way, not to be hooked. The characters are absolutely fabulous and come through strong.

I don't like giving negative reviews, but this was a very difficult book to get through. There were a lot of problems, especially when it came to homosexuality, the Islamic religion (and religion as a whole), and abortion.

As a fan of The Coldest Winter, I expected more. Maybe my expectations were on the higher side, but even then I don't think I'd have enjoyed that much of Life After Death. There was so much promise, but the book became too difficult to even keep track of. On the top of that, Winter has no redeeming qualities for me to even care about her.

You can ready more at Amazon Adviser.

This was the first book I have received to review from NetGallery and I really appreciate the opportunity.

I just could not get into this book. I kept telling myself to keep reading, it’s bound to get better. But it did not get better.

Just not my type of book. Painful to read.

15 years in prison and still the same raw, narcissistic Winter. I really and truly enjoyed The Coldest Winter but can’t even begin to say the same for Life After Death. Like what in the fresh hell did I just attempt to read. I was expecting so much more. I found it incredibly confusing and very hard to read. Perhaps I will continue in the distant future but for now it holds no interest for me.

-Thank you NetGalley for the ARC. All thoughts and opinions are completely my own.-

Thanks NetGalley for the opportunity to read Life After Death, not sure what to say here, wasn't quite sure what I started reading, was hoping it would get better, it didn't. I got about 10% of the way through and just didn't want to read any more, I've got better stories to read
I did not finish this novel, nor would I recommend

It truly pains me to write this review. Like so many of my peers I loved 'The Coldest Winter' I read and re-read it dozens of times when I was a teenager and went on to read all of Sister Souljah's other books. But very sad to say that 'Life After Death' was underwhelming, confusing, and well quite frankly not that good. About 30 pages in I began to lose faith in the plot and the characters but I pushed through wanting and feeling that it would get better and it would all come together, but sadly I was wrong. It truly breaks my heart to write these words but I don't recommend this book.

This book did not disappoint!! We waited so long for another book from sista and she didn’t disappoint! Loved it. Please read!!!

This picks up 15 years after the first book. Winter is just finishing her prison sentence and is offered a reality show (why anyone would care about her, I have no idea. She wasn't a celebrity, her dad was just a drug lord in the 90s, but anyway). She says she'll do the show but only if her conditions are met (her father being released from prison [he's in jail for life for murder so wtf], a mink coat, a read carpet and Bentley for when she's released - we won't even get into how unrealistic they were and how she should be grateful she's even getting offered a reality show, but this is WiNtEr SaNtIaGa). The day she leaves prison, she's shot and killed and the reader is taken on a journey throughout her life after death (in purgatory or hell - it felt like hell to me, I was in hell reading this).

This was just so stupid. There wasn't much of a point to this book. After getting to a certain point (where she gets turned into snake after doing anal [I know, no words]), I skimmed to the end to see what happened. It was stupid and lackluster. Sister Souljah, tried to put some Islamic spin in there that if you confess to Allah, you will be forgiven, which is fine but the way she went about it was deplorable. Sister Souljah's writing also hasn't grown in the 20+ years since the first book and it's very apparent it Winter's character and the dialogue used. I get that Winter's un-likeability was, perhaps, supposed to serve as a lesson but it just made this hard to read.

There was literally no point nor reason for this to be published. There's better literature by black authors (without an anti-abortion, homophobic rhetoric, I might add).

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I was really excited to read this because I loved The Coldest Winter Ever and Midnight and really thought that Sister Souljah could do no wrong! So believe me when I say I am so sad that I have to give this one a less than stellar review. But it just didn't do it for me.

The book is based on Winter's life after she has died (so think heaven, hell, devils, God, etc.). That alone was a bit of a shock to me given the style and content of Sister Souljah's past books. Unfortunately, the storyline ended up being completely disorganized and all over the place. I didn't even know what was happening half of the time. The writing was subpar, not at all the unique style that I have come to know and love from Souljah's books.

The characters that popped up were weird and not very well written. I didn't understand the purpose of quite a few of them (Bridgette for example... could not tell you who she was or what she was doing in this book aside from shouting random nonsense over and over again). The entire last half of the book seemed to be some sort of push/propaganda for the Islamic religion? Not that there is anything wrong with religion, but it was a very odd way of writing about it in what is supposed to be a fictional book.

And don't even get me started on all of the problematic messages littered throughout. I get that Souljah's books are known for being crass and pushing boundaries, but this was just... over the top and not in a good way. I mean, she repeatedly described abortion as murder, condemned any religion that did not worship Allah (those who believed in God/Jesus/Mary, etc. were stuck in the in-between place, couldn't go to Heaven), and that's only 2 of the many issues going on in this book. I'm really not sure how this ended up getting published, honestly.

I guess I can give it props for a little bit of a twist at the end? But even that is not enough to redeem this book.

Yikes.

Firstly, thank you to Netgalley, Simon & Schuster Canada and Sister Souljah for approving my request for an advanced readers copy of the long-awaited sequel to Coldest Winter Ever. Like many millennial black women, Coldest Winter was a formative reading experience for me as a teen, so I was extremely excited to receive an ARC of the sequel.

Where do I begin with reviewing this? I find it challenging to write bad reviews, and I always try and find something positive to say about a book (if I can), and I try to keep my negative reviews constructive. But honestly, I do not think I can be constructive about this book because there was not one single redeeming thing about my reading experience.

Often when I read books I don't like, it's usually a "this was just not the book for me, but it could definitely work for others” kind of thing. In this case though, I wholeheartedly think this is just a really bad book. I am shocked it's being published frankly, and I have to think it’s ONLY being published because it’s a sequel to an intensely popular book, and not because of its actual merit as a novel itself. This story mostly takes place in the grey area between life and death (per the title) of the main character we all loved (and hated) in the first book of this series, Winter Santiaga. The writing is elementary and unsophisticated, the plot is nonsensical/implausible/poorly constructed, and it made Winter Santiaga more cruel and unlikeable that she was in the first book (which says a lot, because in my recollection she was fairly judgmental and unpleasant in Coldest Winter). And honestly, when I got to the end and realized the main message of the book, it was clear to me that this is just some respectability bullshit and messy misogynist propaganda. This book was NOT worth the time I spent on it (and tbh, I skimmed the last half because it was so unbearable and frustrating to read).

[General description of some problematic plot points ahead, these are not super specific spoilers but some people might want to walk into this one blind so this is my warning.] To illustrate my point about the absurdity of the plot, this book included the following: bizarre and underdeveloped notions about Islam/religion in general, some strange cult-y bullshit, sprinklings of body shaming/fatphobia, anti-choice propaganda (i.e. descriptions of abortion as murder), shaming of drug usage/drug addiction, some incredibly culturally insensitive descriptions of various characters of different ethnicities, homophobia, casual and internalized misogyny, a weird obsession with "silky" hair (helllllo internalized anti-blackness/colourism/texturism), AND LITERAL BESTIALITY (seriously, what the fuck, Souljah?!) And that's really just the tip of this disastrous iceberg. Because problematic content aside (Coldest Winter was not without its flaws as we all know), this book was just very poorly done. It did not accomplish what it set out to do, and it didn’t advance Winter’s overall story in the slightest. It was a wholly unnecessary sequel, and quite a jarring and uncomfortable reading experience overall.

Honestly, I wish I could erase this book from my memory entirely. I wish I had never picked it up. And to keep it 100, my giving this book 1 star is quite generous. It doesn’t deserve any stars at all as far as I’m concerned. And though there is no doubt that she changed the reading game and will forever remain an icon of urban literature, this will absolutely be the last Sister Souljah book I ever pick up. Teenage Ebony is BUMMED, and I cannot in good conscience recommend that anyone spend their hard earned money on this book or support it in any way. (less)

Life After Death, everyone has asked the question am I doing enough ,have I fulfilled my life to the fullest,what happens when you leave, is there a heaven,or hell, Winter's face her life after, death, she faces what she has done, does she regret everything ? Is it justified cause Winter is a bitch that knows what she wants, is there consequences while your at the gate waiting to see what path you take, question is does she have mercy for everything she has done in her life. Does Winter pray to God?
Read it for yourself.
Sister Soulja has done it again i know lots of you have waited for a long time for this book let me tell you it's worth the wait.
Enjoy

💫 Book Review 💫
Life After Death by Sister Souljah

Unique. Crass. Full of stereotypes that didn’t sit right with me.

To be truthful I haven’t read anything like this in a long time. It’s the second book to Coldest Winter Ever which was a huge success. I haven’t read that one but was able to follow this story regardless. That said, I regret not going backwards because I think this book was supposed to be a recap of somewhat closure to the first book. It just never hit that mark.

For this book though, the language bothered me. The storyline was choppy and didn’t add to the story. I wasn’t a fan of the writing style or the crassness of what was written. Normally I can find things I enjoyed in all books but this novel lost me when the stereotypes of Islam, homosexuality came in, I struggled to finish it.

The book comes out March 2, 2021
Thank you @netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.