Hereafter ~ Tara Hudson

A ghost story that imagines what it is to be a ghost!

Amelia starts the story as an amorphously dead "I" who is tied to a particular river and a particular grave with no idea why on either account. She has a vague sensation that she shouldn't be dressed in the scanty formal dress she wears, but she doesn't know why not. She suspects that the gravestones in her graveyard would probably give her a name, a past, maybe a time line; but she doesn't have the will to read them. She knows the river and its bridge are crucial in her past because she has nightmare-like periods that end with her transported back in to the murky water, but she escapes as soon as she can each time.

She has substance; she can't walk through walls and instantly cross vast distances. But she may as well be insubstantial. She has no influence on the physical world. She cannot reckon time. She has no senses other than sight and hearing, and nobody can sense her at all.

She is a lost soul.

Then Joshua crashes into her river. She saves him at the exact temporal boundary between life and not life. So Joshua's eyes are opened to the world of the dead. Not only that, but Amelia's senses are opened too. She begins to feel, physically and emotionally. She begins to want to know more about herself and how she came to not be. And she falls in love with Joshua, a love as impossible as any relationship can be. There is a strict and vast divide between the living and the dead. What's more, as she learns how special a case she actually is, she also learns that there is little chance that Joshua will ever be part of her world, whenever death comes for him.

As in most rescue cases, Joshua also falls for Amelia when he falls in the river. And he remains remarkably positive about their future even as they both learn just how many obstacles lie between them.

There is an evil ghost, Eli, who is trying to trap Amelia in an afterlife of luring people to their death. And Joshua's entire family seems to be bent on removing all lost spirits from the Earth, most especially Amelia. Amelia and Joshua must work together to save his sister from Eli while thwarting the efforts of his family. Amelia also learns that her father is one of the souls that Eli has at his bidding. In short there is plenty of suspense.

But the real charm of this book is the intriguing picture Hudson paints of being dead on Earth. With all the ghost stories out there, it is surprising that this portrait of the Hereafter is the first that I've seen that considers so completely what it might be like to exist as a ghost.