What Comes After - by Katie Bayerl (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Cynical, sixteen-year-old Mari has only ninety days to remember how she died and to finally make peace with her mother or risk spending eternity adrift in a vast nothingness"--

Book Synopsis

Sixteen-year-old Mari Novak is dead--and her problems don't end there. For Fans of The Good Place.

Mari never gave much thought to the afterlife before her untimely demise, but she certainly didn't think it would be an experimental wellness enclave called Paradise Gate--a place where the newly dead go to sort out the unfinished business of their lives. She also didn't think the biggest problem to plague her in life would follow her into the great beyond: her also recently deceased mother, Faye. Mari quickly realizes Faye is her unfinished business, and in order to move on to whatever's next, she'll have to find a way to forgive her dysfunctional mother for being no mother at all. But there's so much to forgive: never holding down a steady job, never having a stable home, and abandoning Mari in the end.

It's a lot to sort through, but faced with the possibility of being turned out into the abyss, Mari gets to work. She enrolls in the prescribed self- actualization classes (think: journaling, positive self-talk, and lots of Youga(TM)). It all seems pretty hokey, but still, the assignments force Mari to confront difficult truths about her past.

When a shocking revelation about Mari's death captures the attention of the afterlife media, Mari is suddenly in the spotlight, her messy history being judged by the whole realm. She finds escape in an equally troubled boy, who takes Mari to an obscure part of Paradise Gate and introduces her to rebels who show Mari that this "wellness center" is not all it pretends to be. With classmates disappearing and an afterlife revolution brewing, Mari must decide whether to play it safe or break the rules. At stake? Her eternal fate. Literally.

Review Quotes

Praise for What Comes After

"Readers will be hooked by the mystery; they'll enjoy this different take on life and death and Mari's unconventional experience in the afterlife."--School Library Journal

"A teenage girl who's used to fending for herself dies on her way to the SATs and realizes that her life has only just begun...An intriguing examination of the things that keep us trapped--postmortem or otherwise."--Kirkus Reviews

"This innovative and existential novel by Bayerl (A Psalm for Lost Girls)--reminiscent of The Good Place--offers raw, realistic insights into Mari and her mother's troubled relationship.--Publishers Weekly

About the Author

When Katie Bayerl isn't penning stories, she can be found dancing, writing about social causes, or herding a trio of (mostly well-behaved) cats. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is on the creative writing faculty at Grub Street. Katie lives in Boston, Massachusetts.