Life after death.
An emotional story that I enjoyed, I found it was quite slow paced
A good debut

Two healing families brought together celebrate an unexpected marriage
It’s a heartwarming story about moving on after an unspeakable tragedy and learning how to love again
This fabulous debut is beautifully written, full of emotion and you’re immediately invested right from the first chapter
Thanks @laurenalizagreen @michaeljbooks & @netgalley for the emotional read

A bride freaking out over her seating plan and a groom who thinks the glass is permanently full. Coming up to their wedding, we examine life after the grooms sister has died. It is a bit of a family drama but there was something a little underdeveloped about it.

I was intrigued by the premise of this book and was curious to find out more about Alice and the events that lead to her passing. This book explores love, grief and the unimaginable aftermath of a tragic death in the family and community. Unfortunately, I struggled with timelines in this book and the slow pace meant I was never as fully immersed in the story as I would like to be. With sincere thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to honestly review this book.

This is an obviously well written book with lots of detail and character descriptions but unfortunately it didn't fully grab me. It started well enough but then the pace seemed to slow and it wasn't always immediately clear which POV we were reading. This and the fact that the timeline went back and forth made it a more confusing read than it needed to be.
The family dynamics were dealt with well so maybe some chapter headings would have made things a little clearer.

A raw and at times difficult book to read. The dual time line was a bit confusing and in the end it didn't really work well for me, unfortunately. Maybe younger readers would enjoy it more. I think the fault was probably mine in requesting something a bit different.

This did not end up a good selection for me. I failed to gel with the characters and I found the different time lines not very well introduced.

Thank you to the publishers and to NetGalley for an ARC of this book.
I unfortunately just couldn't get into this book. I really wanted to, and I think the premise was great, but I just didn't get on with Green's writing. I found it overly pretentious and it took me out of it. That being said, potentially it's intentional and I also know that some people would really love this style of writing. But it wasn't for me, sadly.

An excellent, stirring exploration of bereavement - and everything that follows. Heartfelt yet amusing, raw and thought-provoking. The language is wonderful, with the writing jumping between different timelines deftly and effectively. These characters and their secrets will sit with you for a long while after you've put the novel down.

This is a difficult book to rate. The book works in two timelines the period arounf the time of Alice Weil's disappearance / death / suicide and a time over a decade later when Alice's brother and her supposed best friend are to marry.

The news of the wedding is only broken in the shortly before the event mainly because there are things left brewing from the earlier events that mean the latter event is not generally welcomed by the fractured families Alice's death left behind.

In all honesty I struggled with timelines I don't think they were organised or narrated in a way that made it easy for the reader to follow the narrative . particularly the earlier timeline was "fleshed out" with events either unnecessary to the story or simply told in too much detail.

The current day events were better portrayed but I feel the author failed to produce characters that I could say I liked. Apart from Morgan and Alice having a competitive edge to their relationship I really felt I knew nothing about Morgan.

I spent a lot of time thinking that the Author was going to bring Alice back from the dead and am at least grateful that this did not happen. The ending was something of an anti-climax.

I can't say I enjoyed it as a whole but there were some likeable plot lines that perhaps should have been developed. I would try something else from the author. As a debut book it is not all bad

What a deeply moving debut read. I loved it!
Full of secrets, deceit, family relationships, social expectations and the effects of grief. I couldn’t put this book down.
It’s intriguing and beautifully written, heartfelt, honest, funny and empathic. It’s such an enjoyable character based read with an engaging realistic and descriptive storyline. I liked the authors writing style, with the history revealed through flashbacks and told from different POV’s, it works so well and kept me turning the pages. I loved the setting too.
Overall, a thought provoking family drama. Definitely recommend if you enjoy this genre. I look forward to reading more from @laurenalizagreen
With thanks to #NetGallery @michaeljbooks #PenguinRandomHouse for an arc of #TheWorldAfterAlice in exchange for a honest review.
Book publishes 1 August 2024.

What a devastating but beautiful book. Despite the reference to 'after', the novel switches between the aftermath and weeks/months before the death by suicide of Alice Weil, a privileged and seemingly successful high school student from NYC. The effects of her death resonate through the lives of her family and friends years later, brought to the fore as they gather for her brother's wedding. It did feel very much an upper-middle class New York story - the voice and style was self-consciously pretentious throughout, and the concerns of some of the characters were not particularly relatable. This, along with the self-centred self-pitying thoughts and actions of pretty much ALL the main characters, meant I didn't really like any of them!

Despite this, I found the events and characters compelling and really admired the writing, which did a great job of dealing with difficult themes while creating complex and quite dislikable characters. Though I wasn't necessarily rooting for all the characters I was also pleased that there were moments of hope, growth and even redemption.

I had high hopes for this given some of the comparisons made (particularly to Maggie Shipstead's Seating Arrangements, also set at a New England wedding with a long history between the families) but, although enjoyable enough to read, I didn't find it up to that standard. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

The World After Alice is a debut novel for this author but it wasn’t my type of read unfortunately.
It is twelve years since Alice died at the age of sixteen and her best friend, Morgan and her brother, Benji have been in a secret relationship for a couple of years with neither set of parents knowing and now they are getting married. The parents relationships are messy with Benji’s parents having divorced after Alice’s death and it also coming to light that his father had been having an affair with Caro whom he is now married to. Morgan’s parents aren’t married and her father is her mothers best friend as he’s never had the guts to tell her he loves her and she has arrived at the wedding with another man with her who happens to be Alice’s philosophy teacher where at the time lines were crossed between teacher and student.
This books main problem for me was how slow it moved, it took great effort to pick my kindle up and begin, I think had the chapters been shorter this would have helped me. There were also words that I’d not heard of before and had to look up which upset my reading rhythm. I felt the flashbacks didn’t really add anything to the storyline and made the book slower. It was a decent storyline it just needed to get there quicker and more emotion writing in as I didn’t feel it enough. I also would have liked to have known why Alice did what she did but maybe that’s an authors ploy to make me think about it more.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House for this ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.

Set in Maine ,two Families come together after a tragedy 12 years ago. Such a sad story telling how Alice's death affected everyone and continues to do so .A Family Saga of love and loss quite a hard read and a bit of a slow burner .Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC.

I wasn't sure what to expect with this novel and I am not sure now that I have read it, how I would categorise it , however, I enjoyed reading this book. Its a well written story about two families who are surprised to receive a wedding invitation. Benji and Morgan are getting married, their relationship comes as a shock to their families, 12 years earlier Benji's sister Alice died, Morgan was Alice's best friend. This wedding is the first time the families will be together since the funeral of Alice and long hidden secrets are about to come to the surface.

This was an enjoyable read, I didn't feel a deep connection to the characters ( there were a lot) but the plot was engaging, it is well written and I loved the setting. A well observed story and I would absolutely read more from this author.

3.5- 4 stars.

Twelve years have passed since the death of Alice Weil when she was just sixteen. Her younger brother, Benji, hopes his wedding to Alice's childhood best friend, Morgan, will bring his sparring family back together as they celebrate. However, over the course of the weekend, family secrets and rekindled emotions come bubbling to the surface and it's clear that no-one is ready to move on...

The novel goes between the present day, the weekend of Benji and Morgan's whirlwind wedding in Maine, and just over twelve years prior to provide context for the events that unfold. Linnie and Nick are Benji's parents who are thrown back together after separating not long after Alice's funeral when it became apparent that Nick had been having an affair with Caro (who is now his wife). Peter is Linnie's friend and father of Morgan, and he has loved Linnie for years but been too shy to let her know. Linnie's new partner, Ezra, was Alice's philosophy teacher at school - but had a relationship with her that blurred the appropriate student-teacher boundaries...

I usually enjoy a family drama with secrets and getting under the skin of the characters (Tessa Hadley and Ann Patchett spring to mind), however this one just didn't quite hit the mark for me. There were slightly too many characters and I didn't feel that I got to know any of them particularly deeply and it took a while for them to 'stick' in my mind to follow the story. None of the characters were especially likeable either so I didn't really care enough about them to wonder whether the secrets being exposed would prove ruinous or clear the air. Characters don't <have> to be likeable, of course, but it didn't quite work here because everything they were struggling with ended up feeling a bit "rich, white people problems."

It was a disappointment that we never get Alice's voice in the narrative so I'm still not quite sure why it was that she decided to jump from the George Washington Bridge - or perhaps that was what the author intended so that we are in the same position as her parents and friends? (Shades of The Virgin Suicides here.)

The pacing of the story was slow in parts (mostly the flashbacks that I felt didn't add anything to our understanding of modern-day events) and I could have done without the sentimental/twee epilogue.

The use throughout of vocabulary that I had to look up the meanings to was also jarring as it took me out of the story (and kind of made me feel the author was trying to hard to impress their 'literariness').

Overall, a fine debut with plenty of promise for future writing - just didn't pack enough of an emotional punch for me.

Green has written an emotional and extremely well observed story about the aftermath’s of a teenager taking their own life. Set largely over one weekend in Maine, at the wedding of Alive’s little brother, to her best friend, the ongoing impact of their shared grief and different responses is highlighted in a way that is often sad and stressful but also amusing and quirky.
I liked it and would recommend to those who like a character based study, with the history revealed through flasbacks l from different points of view. I think it works well here and it kept me engaged .
A good four stars.

The premise of the book sounded good: a young girl jumps from a bridge to her death 12 years previously and today her now divorced parents are attending the wedding of her younger brother and best friend, along with other people who were around 12 years before. The story jumps from the present to Alice’s funeral to the time before her suicide. Unfortunately I felt the characters were 2d and never really came to life. None of them engaged me so I wasn’t really invested in the narrative and found myself checking how much further until the end.

Thank you to netgalley and publishers for an advanced copy of this book for my honest opinion. I'm not sure what genre I would place this into, topics include love, friendships and family dynamics but also loss, grief and suicide. A well written book that I'm glad I had the opportunity to read. 3,5*