The thing is…this wasn’t really my type of book. It doesn’t deserve a bad review just because I didn’t care for it.  So, read on…

Mari, a sixteen-year-old teen, finds herself in a sort-of-afterlife-but-not-yet-heaven place called Paradise Gate. It’s an odd sort of place administered by a duo called, appropriately, The Powers That Be.  At some distant past point, souls would appear in this space and be lost without any direction.  Three such souls decided that everyone deserved an opportunity to resolve past conflicts and move on; so they created Paradise Gate.  Everyone who comes has ninety days to improve themselves so they can be selected to ascend.  There are self-help classes, healthy food (lots of kale), Youga (yoga to better yourself), and counselors.  The objective is to do all the right things, think the right things, say the right things, and collect enough points to ascend. Mari doesn’t exactly fit in.  Not everybody does.

Mari’s mother, Faye, had died just a month earlier so she is still in Paradise Gate; and, to Mari’s dismay, not really any different.  The two are housed together and Mari finds herself falling into the same patterns of taking care of Faye that defined her whole life starting as a small child.  Mari tries to do all that is asked of her but her points never really add up.  Faye is struggling as the process and steps just don’t mean anything to her; Faye is a bit of a wild child. Mari waffles between trying to inspire and motivate Faye to ignoring her failures and refusing to talk to her.

Mari meets souls who become friends, some enemies, and some are just super hot.  She discovers that there is a sort of underground to Paradise Gate; a place for the disaffected and the ones who don’t fit.  Mari is beginning to suspect both she and Faye may fit into those groups.  But the penalty for not following the rules is to not be able to ascend and condemned to exist in this purgatory forever.  But Mari is not alone; there are many who question the rightness of the rules and the fairness of applying arbitrary rules to people who don’t all fit in one mold.  And to her dismay, she becomes a flashpoint for a revolution.

Okay, problems for me:  why is time a factor in an afterlife?  It’s made clear that eternity is the rule. Why have so many people acquiesced to this process? And why is everything (food, clothing, social media and more) geared towards American culture?  Shouldn’t this be about everyone?  I was also dismayed at the level of selfishness and meanness that didn’t seem to affect points; neither did altruism raise points. And the book synopsis promises “laugh out loud” moments; I didn’t find any of those, instead I found lots to cause me to cringe.  I can appreciate what the author tried to say about social media, relationships, and consequences but the entirety of the story left me frustrated.  It could have been more. 

There’s nothing wrong with the author’s wordsmithing, world-building or dialogue.  And the simple plot and characters may very well appeal to a younger audience who doesn’t yet need bigger concepts.  ~~ Catherine Book