Aftertaste

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Pub Date May 20 2025 | Archive Date Jun 19 2025

Description

What if you could have one last meal with someone you’ve loved, someone you’ve lost? Combining the magic of Under the Whispering Door with the high-stakes culinary world of Sweetbitter, Aftertaste is an epic love story, a dark comedy, and a synesthetic adventure through food and grief.

A food story to binge.
A ghost story to devour.
A love story to savor.


Konstantin Duhovny is a haunted man. His father died when he was ten, and ghosts have been hovering around him ever since. Kostya can’t exactly see the ghosts, but he can taste their favorite foods. Flavors of meals he’s never eaten will flood his mouth, a sign that a spirit is present. Kostya has kept these aftertastes a secret for most of his life, but one night, he decides to act on what he’s tasting. And everything changes.

Kostya discovers that he can reunite people with their deceased loved ones—at least for the length of time it takes them to eat a dish that he’s prepared. He thinks his life’s purpose might be to offer closure to grieving strangers, and sets out to learn all he can by entering a particularly fiery ring of Hell: the New York culinary scene. But as his kitchen skills catch up with his ambitions, Kostya is too blind to see the catastrophe looming in the Afterlife. And the one person who knows Kostya must be stopped also happens to be falling in love with him.

Set in the bustling world of New York restaurants and teeming with mouthwatering food writing, Aftertaste is a whirlwind romance, a heart-wrenching look at love and loss, and a ghost story about all the ways we hunger—and how far we’d go to find satisfaction.
What if you could have one last meal with someone you’ve loved, someone you’ve lost? Combining the magic of Under the Whispering Door with the high-stakes culinary world of Sweetbitter, Aftertaste is...

Advance Praise

“Dark and delicious, sincerely moving and at times laugh out loud funny, a heady, bittersweet, beautiful novel about life and death, grief and closure, passion and hunger. A must-read.” —RACHEL HARRISON, USA Today  Bestselling author of So Thirsty and Black Sheep

“Combining the grit of the restaurant world with the magic of the afterlife, Daria Lavelle perfectly blends unexpected ingredients into a book you'll want to savor. It's a story about grief that's filled with humor, warmth, and astounding creativity, and I already can't wait to read it again.” —LAURA HANKIN, author of One-Star Romance  and The Daydreams 

Aftertaste offers the glories of food and cooking—all the yes-chef details we now love—in a cool, brilliant, and suspenseful novel whose spec-fic plot wants to talk about the mysteries of sense-memory and death.  I could not put it down.” —JOAN SILBER, author of Secrets of Happiness  and  Improvement

“Dark and delicious, sincerely moving and at times laugh out loud funny, a heady, bittersweet, beautiful novel about life and death, grief and closure, passion and hunger. A must-read.” —RACHEL...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781668061596
PRICE $28.99 (USD)
PAGES 400

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