SYYA’s Reviews > Life After Life > Status Update

Ok, cool, whtv. It’s fine.

Yet, this is somehow worse because my expectations were raised and all I want to do is go back to Ursula’s childhood and have her relationships developed instead of spending so long on who Sylvie is and her viewpoint. ‘Worldbuilding’? I guess so, but I don’t know enough about our protagonist despite seeing near all her childhood and I’m so annoyed (at the moment) (this might change)

Who the fuck is Jimmy, first of all. Secondly, as said before, I currently don’t care enough about Millie for the update on her life, job and marriage to be relevant. I don’t know anything about her personality or relationship to Ursula. She’s just one of the five daughters next door!

Ursula and Teddy started to have their relationship develop FINALLY a few pages ago, with a sweet “I love you anyways” and their father returning home, but turn the next page and we’re post WWII, nearly thirty years later. It’s such a sudden and vast change I’ve almost gotten mental whiplash, and whilst I like the way the book is written this is unfortunately a huge downside to the format.

Huge time jump now, and I’m actually kinda sad the narrative has pushed forwards so fast. Before, we spent lots of time within her childhood and characters were developed each rebirth, but unfortunately this set up makes for moments to be more fleeting and seem underdeveloped in the short term.

I like this part of the book. Ursula seems more active and preventative, and I enjoy the fact that it doesn’t always go to plan. She has to die multiple times and change a different thing each time for the outcome, slowly working it out and learning from her past experiences without explicitly knowing that they are in fact past experiences. Slow start but I’m enjoying myself now.

Teddy just died, I’m liking this book a bit more. Not because a child died, but because it feels like the plot is actually moving along and actions are becoming more consequential. It took a while, but I’m getting a bit happier with this. STATUS UPDATE: not too bad, glad I’m carrying on instead of dropping it.

But yeah, definitely not for me so far. I’m only finishing this because of my school coursework, otherwise I probably would have dropped this by now.

The writing style isn’t that bad, I’ve changed my mind. She’s a decent writer. This book is DEFINITELY not for me, though. I understand what it’s going for, and it’s not executed poorly at all, but it’s not..interesting. I’m not invested in any of the characters. It’s more of a recounting of events and I don’t see much that lets the characters open up to me.