Wallace is a seemingly heartless, career-driven lawyer who ends up dying from a heart attack while alone at the office. At his funeral, he meets a woman who can see him. She says that she is a Reaper and she brings him to a teashop to meet his Ferryman, who is supposed to help Wallace come to terms with being dead and help him prepare for the next step of his journey.

I loved a lot of Under the Whispering Door. There's a sweetness to the whole book, with likable characters, heartfelt moments and a found-family vibe.

The book didn't always work for me though. The pacing of the book felt off and it seemed longer than it was. Sometimes the dialog seemed unnatural, like there was a list of things that they had to say during each interaction.

I tried to read this last year but quit halfway through because of the issues that I mentioned. I'm glad that I gave this another chance and finally finished it. ( )

While a nice, hopeful, read this books overstayed it's welcome by quite a bit. It felt like there was a lot of repetition and the secondary love story plot felt forced and entirely unnecessary. ( )

3.75⭐ ( )

Under the Whispering Door was written by TJ Klune, the same brilliant author who wrote one of my favourite books, The House in the Cerulean Sea. I seized the chance to read more by Mr. Klune. His characters are always multi-faceted, many of them are queer, others people of colour. Klune's books are inclusive, and powerfully written.

I found this book terribly painful, and I wept through the last few chapters. I don't know whether right now was the worst time or the best time to read this novel. It's largely about death, and living a full life, and as I am coming face-to-face with my own mortality, the story both reassured me and terrified me.

The book also made me ache terribly for someone who understands me the way the lovers do in this novel. I will say that I found the romance far too like the one in The House in the Cerulean Sea. It was far too predictable that the two characters will end up together. I also didn't like the last-minute literal plucked-from-death trope, I found it unconvincing and a little annoying. That being said, I really did like this book.

Mr. Klune, you owe me Kleenex. ( )

Wallace Price is a ghost observing his own funeral. He was a ruthlessly successful lawyer, and he's supremely disapproving that nobody can think of anything good to say about him at the small gathering. In the midst of his self-centered consternation, Mei arrives to escort him to "the ferryman." Arriving with Mei at an unassuming tea shop, Wallace meets two additional ghosts: an elderly man named Nelson, and the dog Apollo. He also meets Hugo, the tea shop proprietor whose role is to assist the newly dead with "crossing over" to what comes next.

This book has all the emotions, but also asks some philosophical questions. Despite the innately heavy nature of a story about death, the narrative was given a deftly lighthearted delivery, and I laughed out loud in a number of places. I strongly resisted growing to like Wallace because of how unsympathetic he was when introduced, but this is essentially the story of his redemption, and by the end I was convinced. This was for me a 3/3.5-star book most of the way through, until it hit 4 stars during the last 15% or so. By far the strangest thing about my experience with this book is having read it simultaneously, purely by coincidence, with Cemetery Boys. The parallels are eerie. ( )