Review: The Afterlife of Walter Augustus

A bit obvious, uneventful and a miss for me.

As always this review is based on my experience of reading this book and not reflective of the actual content or story for a broader audience (I say because I'm not particularly glowing in my rating!).

If I had this on holiday then I may have warmed to it a little more. It definitely feels like the kind of book that doesn't require much thinking.

I found the twist "baddie" very obvious but at the same time lots of the story moved forwards without any real reason.

I came away from reading the book like it had been 100 pages or so. Maybe it's because I felt like the characters didn't have any depth - the sister Victoria is cruel and unkind to the protagonist Letty, but it seems for no reason other than to make a bad character (in the living world).

Then there's Walter, living in the afterlife (or the interim, or maybe even purgatory…), it's unclear why he's been there for so long - what was special about his name. He wrote a book of poem, god knows how many hundreds of years prior to the current day, so I'm not entirely sure why he doesn't pass on.

Later we meet Hector. I'm not sure how he's part of Walters "life". Maybe it was explained and I skimmed idly past it, or perhaps it's just some rando that has a larger part to play - and even then, when Hector plays his hand, he kind of just falls off the pages.

All in all, a bit of a miss for me.