Amelia is dead.
She doesn’t remember who she is, she doesn’t remember her family, she doesn’t remember her friends, she doesn’t feel anything.
As she wanders amongst the living who neither see nor hear her, she is frequently pulled into nightmares where she drowns alone in the cold dark water over and over again.
Until the time she is no longer alone, and she is not the one drowning, he is.
Joshua is sinking, unconscious, in her river, he is dying her death. Unwilling to watch him die Amelia does everything she can think of to get him to save himself. Which is when he opens his eyes and sees her.
Love at first, second, and third sight ensues but of course the road to true love is not easy. Amelia is still a ghost and Joshua is alive and part of a Seerer family.
Ruth, Joshua’s grandmother, can not only hear and see Amelia but is convinced that she is evil and needs to be exorcized.
And then there is Eli.
Cast as a rival for Joshua’s affections Eli is also dead, though it is not clear exactly what that means for Eli or Amelia, as Eli is the only source of information Amelia has about her particular existence.
Unlike other love triangles, Amelia is not torn between the two, she has a definite preference for her affections, not that the losing party sees that as any reason to bow out gracefully.
There were moments in this book where I was a little lost with what was happening and where the story was going, but Hudson’s ideas are most interesting and her composition of the world and at least one of the after-worlds is artistic and rendered uniquely.
There is a second book which I am about to start, so it is worth carrying on, even if I’m not sure where the series is headed.
The Hereafter Trilogy Book #1 Followed By: Arise
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HarperTeen, 2011 407 pages ISBN: 9780062026774
Suggested Reading Level: Grade 9+
Hudson, T. (2011). Hereafter. New York: HarperTeen.