I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

What Comes After by Katie Bayerl is a first person-POV YA speculative exploring the afterlife in a similar vein to The Good Place. Mari has died and finds herself in the afterlife for the non-religious along with her recently deceased mother. She has to take lessons to become a better person if she’s to save her soul from joining the void, but that’s easier said than done, especially when she has to live with her mother all over again.

The second I saw that this was compared to The Good Place, I immediately picked up a copy. I think whether or not the comparison fits is really going to depend on what about The Good Place kept you watching. What Comes After has a much more serious tone compared to The Good Place’s drama-comedy genre and the focus isn’t on philosophy or the major themes of humans making each other better through love and care. Where it is similar to The Good Place is the alternative version of an afterlife, the different sections of the afterlife, the classrooms, and the complex parent-child relationships.

The complex parent-child relationships mostly come through in Mari’s relationship with her mother, Faye. I think it’s really hard not to sympathize with Mari or feel that she is in the right for being upset with her mother for not giving her a stable home life even if Faye did have some other stuff going on that does help explain it. Children deserve to have a home where they can grow into people who believe anything is possible whereas Mari’s ultimate dream was becoming a normal adult who’s biggest worry is paying the bills. Eventually they might have a healthier relationship, but it will take time.

Much like The Good Place, there is a romance arc between Mari and another teen named Jethro. It’s much more of a subplot compared to the romance arc between Eleanor and Chidi, which over time became more of a major focus in Eleanor and Chidi’s character arcs and the broader story. I was fine with this because while I love a strong romance arc, the other themes going on were taking a lot of space and needed that room to breathe.

I would recommend this to readers of novels exploring the afterlife and fans of The Good Place who loved the complex parent-child relationship between Eleanor and her mother and Tahani and her parents

This was okay. I struggled to get into it and to connect with the story, though. I liked the concept but it just didn’t deliver for me.

Thank you to Penguin Random House and NetGalley for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Mari, age 16, is dead, circumstances unknown. She finds herself in an afterlife that looks like earth – she even has to take classes with other recently deceased teens. She is also surprised to be rooming with her predeceased, estranged mother. This is a secular afterlife and everything is based on a point system to pay for clothes, rent, etc. Points are also necessary to ascend to the next plane of existence or souls are exiled to the endless void for eternity. But not everyone is happy in Paradise Gate and Mari soon discovers why.
This book was billed as a YA The Good Place. Unfortunately, like The Good Place, it went on too long, especially with the “world building.” I liked the idea behind this book and there were some humorous moments. I really wanted to like this book but it was just ok.

This is an intriguing story that ultimately fell a little short for me. I went into it with hope that our narrator may find in the afterlife the things she didn’t have in life: a close friend, romance, maybe even a healthier relationship or some kind of closure with her mom. However, the story focused more and more on what was wrong in the afterlife - mirroring greed, corruption, and other societal problems - and less on our narrator’s personal journey. An interesting turn, but not what I was expecting, and I feel like the author introduced a lot of issues and characters leading to a revolution without going into enough depth and then wrapped things up too neatly and quickly for that much tension.

THOUGHTS

Any book that's set in the afterlife is a book set to tackle great philosophical questions, and this book... certainly tries. I'm not sure that it succeeds that much. Don't get me wrong. It isn't a bad read. I'm just not so sure how successful it is at its own subgenre.


PROS
Eternal Life, Eternal Problems: When life keeps on going after death, all of life's problems seem to follow along. At least here. Mari has a lot on her shoulders, in life and in death, and most of those problems stem from the interpersonal relationships in her life. When those relationships continue on into the afterlife, of course she brings her problems with her. And she's not the only one. I like that this book focuses on the work someone might need to do, internally and interpersonally, to reach some sort of real self-actualization, one not dependent on wiping the slate clean and just forgetting all that came before. Those problems don't go away just because you died, right?

Self-Help Callout: As much as this book deals with "self-actualization," it doesn't just happily fall into the realm of quasi-spiritualism, self-help, and non-denominational enlightenment. In fact, it really calls out that sort of gross, grifter economy of guru influencer and self-actualization expert--you know, the kinds who make money off their books that teach you how to get rich, get happy, get better (but really only give the authors money and the readers benign platitudes). This economy takes advantage of people who are desperate, people who need real help, and that comes through here, too, in Katie Bayerl's non-religious afterlife.

Secular Afterlife: Which does lead me to another note. It is really nice to dig into this vision of, you know, a secular afterlife. An afterlife not rooted in ideas of Heaven and Hell, or cosmic energy, or reincarnated enlightenment, or the fields of Asphodel, or any other religious imagining. Katie Bayerl imagines an eternity in the void, but not a dark and scary void. Just, you know, a void. A void that is both limitless nothingness and limitless potential--the kind of potential that can birth a technocratic society of spirituality influencers run by AI and good vibes. And I did like the idea that the spiritual guru influencers and tech-bro influencers are natural allies, them against the suggestible masses. They really are a grifter match made in non-denominational heaven.


CONS
Strawman: As much as I liked some of the concepts Bayerl employs in this book, I just don't think an afterlife book will ever be that impactful if it isn't working in a tried-and-true form of eternity. Questions of Heaven and Hell, of Karmic justice, of redemption and salvation and sin and sinners, feel much more meaningful than a grifter AI afterlife. That's more of a strawman than anything else, because nobody believes in this type of eternity anyway. So building it up just to take it down makes for a book, but it doesn't make for a very good philosophical discussion. And I don't know about you, but I pick up an afterlife book for something of a philosophical discussion.

Uncomfy: This book's treatment of Mari's new friend Larisa made me as uncomfortable as using the word "uncomfy" (which I do hate, by the way). She's more of a prop character than anything else. She doesn't get to stand on her own. And in a moment of irritation, Mari throws an accusation of jealousy toward Larisa that feels, well, uncomfortably homophobic (in a playing-into-stereotypes way). Even if Mari does immediately apologize, nothing about this sat right with me. It felt icky. It made me sad.

Naming Conventions: I don't know. The names in this book kept throwing me off. They're unusual enough to make an impact on the page without any particular purpose. This book felt like I was reading about characters instead of reading about people. The names felt so intentionally chosen (without there being a given intention in the book) that it could only be by authorial intent, and that just isn't great for immersion.


Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
6/10
Fans of Akemi Dawn Bowman's The Infinity Courts will like stepping into this new AI afterlife. Those who loved The Worst Perfect Moment by Shivaun Plozza will like wrestling with these new questions of eternity in community.

I wasn’t expecting this to be a YA, so that’s on me. I can’t imagine an afterlife where I’d still have to worry about boys, social media, and paying rent (even with karmic points). I expected this to be more of a Black Mirror-esque lens on what happens after you die, but it’s definitely more like if The Good Place was set in a high school.

The book begins with Mari's death.

She died a few weeks short of her seventeenth birthday, while on the way to the SAT and her future. Mari has been a force dealing with her mother's shortcomings throughout her life, and the death of her mother a few weeks before.

She had never been religious, and was surprised to find herself i a place called Paradise Gate where she was supposed to face and conclude any unfinished business. The problem was, her unfinished business was her mother, who she seems to be stuck "living" with in the Gates. She also finds out, if the business can not be settled before a specific point in time, or if she does not have enough points earned by following the rules and attending classes, she can be sent to a nothing and not move to paradise or whatever is the opposite.

Mari has always been the one to follow rules, but she finds herself questioning, leaning about her mother and others, and learning about herself.

I like Mari and the people she gets to know. While I didn't agree with some of her decisions, I think she made the decisions that worked for her, her mother, and others she has come to know. Mari is honest when she is given credit for things she shouldn't, and does look after her mother when times are difficult.

The characters are well developed. I could "see" some of her friends, and others she was warned to stay away from, like the virgins... I found myself arguing with the story when the news came on and they either loved or hated Mari, and how the reporters changed the story for ratings.

I am recommending this to some of my students that may not always understand that they must sometimes do what is in their best interest. This is a great read about what could happen after death, and is not focused on a specific religious belief. It does not take away from any particular religion, but accounts for those who do not follow a specific religion, question, or are agnostic. This is NOT a religious telling of the afterlife.

I was given the opportunity to read this book by NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

I suspect this wasn't the book for me, but at least the last quarter made up for everything that had been making the read less interesting.

3+

I had three comparisons as I read this story. At first, for a long time, I couldn't not think of The Good Place. You suddenly die and end up in this post-life community with weird people acting very differently from what you'd expect? Plus, all the Big-Brother-like control of society, etc. The worldbuilding was very similar, even if it was obvious that the plot wouldn’t be.

As I read on, I started feeling that there was also a lot of The Sims. People have their emotions graded in colors, and you get points for achievements that you can use to buy stuff? I don’t even know how I didn’t think of that before.

Finally, and I think this is the comparison I'll take with me because it should have been the most obvious—it’s the myth of having to get into college.

We start with Mari realizing that she can have an actual life, not the struggle her mother had always put her through, if she just follows all the steps of the “recipe” to get into college and become someone. Right when she’s about to take her SATs, she dies. But the place her soul ends up in also has this limited time, in the middle of all the confusion—in this case, of having just died, and in college’s case, of being a teenager—to accumulate merits and be judged by some self-appointed people who claim it’s all for your own good. And if you don’t pass their evaluation? "Well, let’s not talk about it now." Poor Mari died and had to restart college admissions. In other words. But that’s just a theory.

Despite my three comparisons, the truth is that the book is like those with dystopian futures—only it’s not set in the future but in the… Beyond? We see an evolved society dictating rules that seem like the best thing anyone ever thought of—until you analyze them further. Unfortunately, I’m not a fan of that genre, so the reading dragged a lot. Moreover, even if it had a new coat of paint, at its core, it was still more of the same for these kinds of books—even though I could see glimpses of paths that, had it followed, I would have loved. Again, I was reading the wrong book for me, and I suspect fans of the genre will know how to appreciate it better.

Still, as I mentioned, the book does get better. I don’t know if the author felt freer nearing the end, but as we got to the climax—and especially during the denouement—small situations kept making me laugh and feel glad that I had stuck with it. "So this is why I had to go through all that information!"

Overall, this wasn’t the book for me, but I can see its appeal. The final stretch was the highlight, cooking up thoughts, making it memorable in the end.


Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

I requested this book from NetGalley because as I've probably mentioned before, I'm always into anything that sounds a little Black Mirror-y. The afterlife as a wellness commune where the main character has to deal with unexpected and unwanted interpersonal issues instead of just moving on to peace pinged my radar. Also, I apparently had read and enjoyed the author's book The Psalm of Lost Girls, according to my GoodReads history.

For the first 60% of the book, I was really looking forward to picking it up at the end of each day and honestly thought I was on track to consider it a 4-star read. But then it just started spinning its wheels and it felt like I was never getting any closer to the end. The final 20% of the book in particular really needed an editor to suggest drastically simplifying the plot and asking the author what exactly the motivations of the antagonists were (and maybe even clarifying who the antagonists were). The very final stretch of 10-15 pages takes on a goofy, slapstick tone that isn't consistent with the rest of the book and left me skimming through as fast as I could so that I could just be done with it.

Actual rating 2.5 stars

The concept for this book was pretty interesting and as a fan of The Good Place as well as general paranormal/afterlife focused stories, I was so up for this story. There's some really compelling parts like the memory technology and the critique of lifestyle influencers and the commodification of spiritualism, but the characters are really weak, there's an uninspired romance, and a weak ending. I just feel like the potential of the premise was not fulfilled, and it also got pretty confusing at times. Mari's character arc didn't feel believable and the conclusion of her relationship with her mother was too "sunshine and rainbows" to me. It made them equals in a way they never were as parent and child.

This read a little like Zevin's Elsewhere, but was snarkier and Mari's death was more problematic. It was interesting to have a secular version of heaven, but am not sure that anyone would really want to go, especially it involves so much "homework". Faye was an interesting case, and it's no surprise that Mari isn't thrilled to see her. Might consider for high school, but will pass on this for middle school.

Katie Bayerl’s What Comes After transports readers to Paradise Gate, a quirky and unsettling afterlife where sixteen-year-old Mari has ninety days to unravel the mystery of her untimely death and confront her fraught relationship with her mother, Faye. Darkly humorous and thought-provoking, the novel delves into themes of forgiveness, grief, and the complexities of family bonds. Younger readers, especially those who have experienced strained parental relationships, may find Mari’s journey particularly relatable.

At its heart, the story is one of self-discovery and healing. Mari is a resilient and compelling protagonist, determined to make peace with her past. Through her perspective, Bayerl masterfully explores the tension between love and resentment, capturing the raw emotions of a mother-daughter relationship marked by both deep wounds and unbreakable ties.

The world of Paradise Gate is richly imagined, offering a satirical take on purgatory with its grief scarves, vibe trackers, and cryptic lessons on ascension. These clever details add levity to the novel’s heavier themes, though the pacing occasionally lags, particularly after the revelation of Mari’s death. Still, the intrigue of Paradise Gate and Mari’s rebellious spirit keep the story engaging.

Fans of The Good Place will appreciate the novel’s blend of dark comedy and heartfelt introspection. While the plot could be tighter, What Comes After is a unique and reflective take on the afterlife, weaving humor, mystery, and emotion into a captivating exploration of unfinished business, second chances, and the enduring pull of family.

When thinking about life after death, most consider heaven, hell, or purgatory. For Mari, it's purgatory, but she lands in an unlikely place that resembles a competitive reality show. This is definitely not "The Lovely Bones." Bayerl gives voice to Mari, a sassy, cynical, almost-17-year-old now living in a state of confusion alongside her also-dead mother. They, along with other non-believers, have arrived in Last Chance Purgatory—a place where things can be made right. Or can they? She's in Paradise Gate, where her tasks seem closer to mundane dullness than anything else. And then there's Jethro—attractive, boyfriend-worthy, and a total bad boy. What's a girl to do? This rollicking romp will answer readers' need for lightness during times of grief and confusion. Intended for the YA audience, anyone looking for a laugh will love "What Comes After."

Recommended for book clubs, YA audiences, and all who enjoy a good read.

Full disclosure: I received this ARC from NetGalley and Penguin in exchange for an unbiased review. Thank you for this opportunity.

it's definitely for fans of the good place, because the setting is very similar. mari is an interesting protag, but the story overaall feels a bit flat. 3 stars. tysm for the arc.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. All opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I wanted to like this novel much more than I did. I did connect with Mari and Faye right away, but the story itself was a lot to follow, and repetitive. I feel like the premise was good, but some things were over explained while other things were glossed over.

I requested this book because it reminded me of Heaven Looks A Lot Like A Mall, which is a book I recently reread as an adult a few years ago. Upon a reread I felt it was lacking and pretty forgettable. I think this book is in the same vein but there’s a little bit more meat to the story. However it did not need to be over 400 pages

I love when YA novels tackle serious subject like this one because it gives the reader a bit of a lighter entrance into what could be a very dark subject. I was very interested in the blurb of this book and I found the plot to be very interesting and unlike a lot of books that I have been reading lately so it was a nice change of pace for me. When our main character Marni dies before she can move forward she is told that she must finish her business, and make amends with her mother as well as figure out how she died. Like a lot of people were saying I was also getting "a good place" vibe from this story however that was not an unpleasant experience because I loved that show. I liked how we as a reader we left trying to figure out everything along with our main character. I loved our main character Marnie and I found her very well written. I loved how we got to see her struggle in what should have been a perfect world. Not only was she super realistic but I also enjoyed her sarcastic attitude it really painted the picture of her as a believable angsty teenage girl. This was a quick read however it was still super captivating. What I didn't like to much about this book however was there wasn't too much character development. I found a lot of them to be a bit two dimensional and dry at times, and the story took a while before I really felt immersed in it. Great concept and characters however not the best delivery, however I'm sure I'm not the target demographic for this story.

Full review to come on Goodreads and Amazon. Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for a review copy.

As a girl who had watched The Good Place way more many times than healthy (gimme any episode and i can quote it) when I saw “For fans of The Good Place” I knew I had to read it and What Comes Next did not disappoint! Mari had me on the edge of my seat and every twist took me out! I couldn’t put it down! Incredible world building and characters that you can’t help but love. A fun and engaging story!

Mari is cynical and stuck in the afterlife trying to figure out how she died and make peace with her mother. I think that this book has a lot of potential that was just confused by the rules of the "afterlife". It felt like rules popped up or bent or changed based on what was convenient to the story which made everything confusing to follow. Sometimes it felt like a ton was happening and then there were long stretches where nothing was happening. The backstory with her mom felt really repetitive and didn't really give the entire emotional arc a chance to get off the ground before throwing in a non-relevant romance.

While this was a super interesting concept it just didn't feel like it was fully conceived. I think that this book does do some good with the talk surrounding healthy boundaries and the importance of self-reflection but overall just wasn't fully developed.