Two words: heartbreakingly beautiful. Those were the ones that I whispered to myself after finishing this memoir, while holding my kindle to my chest, and releasing a huge sigh. Here After by Amy Lin is a memoir about a young woman’s grief after her husband dies, and it’s also an epic love story. Lin flawlessly weaves snippets her loss, grief, and people’s reactions to it with memories of her relationship with her late husband. It also acts as an important reminder that grief has no timeline. It’s not cut and dry, black or white, or ever truly goes away. Grief has many shapes and forms, and can rear its ugly head at the most unexpected times. Lin’s writing is absolutely stunning. It’s lyrical, raw, honest, and extremely intimate. At times, it felt like I was reading her personal journal. I was captivated by her words, journey, and strength to share her experience with us all. I have a feeling that this memoir will take the book world by storm in the new year. Here After releases on March 5th, 2024, and it gets 5/5 stars from me.

Wowzer this is a memoir unlike any other! It took a minute to get into the format which is a little stream of thought, but once I figured it out I loved it. It was short and yet I cried almost throughout the entire book. If you want to understand how horrible and unrelenting grief is then this is the book for you. I read this in one day and could not put it down.

Amy Lin's husband was here, and then he went out for a run and was gone: unexpectedly dead at 32. "Here After" chronicles those first fresh waves of grief as she learned to navigate the world—and an unexpected health crisis of her own—as a young widow.

The book moves effortlessly between then and now—then, when they were healthy and in love and thought it would last forever, and now, when Lin came up against, over and over, her new reality.

"When Kurtis has been dead two years, it is still an impossibility. If people ask me how long it has been, I say a year because that is how it feels." (loc. 1099*)

It is, for obvious reasons, not a particularly easy read. Lin had had her eye on a career as a writer even before her husband died, but this was never the book she wanted to write. There's an interesting bit early on regarding someone else's grief—a woman roughly Lin's age whose husband also died young, someone Lin didn't reach out to at the time because she didn't want to intrude on the other woman's grief. "I have yet to realize silence only isolates the bereaved even more than death already has" (loc. 216). A hard lesson to learn, but not a surprising one. (What surprises me is the 'friend', later in the book, who steps away from being supportive because they "have to protect [their] light" (loc. 452)—don't be that friend.)

The thing I like best is probably the fluid back-and-forth structure—I'm not sure if the before and after will be more visibly separated in the final print version (I read a digital ARC), but the fluid shifts from then to now and back again feel very fitting for the immediacy of grief. But be prepared for a read that is fully and fundamentally about grief and how it reshapes your entire existence.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Beautiful and heartbreaking. A well-crafted book about love and loss. Heavy themes of grief and death. However, it is done in a way that is raw and real. I read this book in just a couple of hours. I know it will stay with me much longer. Thanks to NetGalley and Zibby Bookd for the ARC.

Amy navigates the profound journey of loss after losing her partner. Reading it took time; the raw emotions required pauses for processing. The memoir sincerely weaves grief, love, and friendship into its narrative, making it a very impactful and thought-provoking experience.

The sincerity in Amy's narrative resonated deeply with me, and I believe its honesty has the power to assist others in navigating their grief. By sharing her journey, Amy reminds us that behind appearances, many people are dealing with challenges not always visible. Just because someone looks okay doesn’t mean they are okay.

I had to pause a couple of times as tears welled up in my eyes. The author's ability to evoke such strong emotions speaks to the profound and authentic storytelling within the book. Memoirs like this truly serve as profound gifts to the world.

Thank you Zibby Books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I've been following Amy's writing for years, and I'm so thrilled for all the new readers who are about to discover it. This book is gripping from sentence one, infused with so much humanity and love and grief, all unravelling the strands of loss that no one should have to live through—and just barely putting us back together at the end. Reading it expanded my humanity. What a gorgeous, sorrowful gem of a book.

Amy Lin has given us a raw and up close look at the unending grief and pain she felt after the unexpected and unexplained death of her husband one day in the early part of the pandemic, when they were both in their thirties. I applaud Lin's honesty and am in awe of her poetic ability to bring us along with her and Kurtis during their relationship and in the aftermath of his death. For bystanders to grief, Lin reminds us that grief is not linear nor does it adhere - at all - the mythical "five stages." Rather it is ugly, ceaseless and irrational. Thank you to Zibby Books and NetGalley for the ARC.