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Sidekick Super Review: After Life (2025) by Gayle Forman
- Apr 30
- 6 min read
The Basics
Page Length: 272
Audiobook Length: ~6.5 hours
Grade Reading Level: 7+
Target Audience Age: 12-18
Goodreads Score: 3.60 out of 5
Buy it HERE
Setting: Contemporary small town America
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Fiction/Fantasy
Topics: Grief, Family, Romance, Friendship, Memory, Healing, Photography, High School, LGBTQ+
Plot: Amber Crane died seven years ago, just before her senior prom and high school graduation. So, when she suddenly reappears back home, her family is in complete shock. After Amber comes to terms with her death, she begins to realize everything she left behind—and everything that changed in the wake of her loss. Her family is different, her friends are different, and her forever-love high school sweetheart is definitely different.
In this afterlife she’s navigating, Amber starts to see the kind of person she was when she was alive—and she’s not impressed. She always had big plans, but she never got the chance to follow through on them, and the life she did live feels selfish in hindsight. Will she be able to piece back together what broke after her death? Is this a second chance? And how will she choose to use it?
Themes: Second chances, regret and forgiveness, choices and consequences, the weight of unfinished business, family struggles and bonds, grief/mental health after loss
You might like this book if you like:
Photography
Journaling/creative introspective writing
Books like: They Both Die at the End, Elsewhere, All the Bright Places, The Sky is Everywhere, Eleanor and Park
Shows like: The Good Place, This Is Us, The OA, A Million Little Things, Dead to Me, 13 Reasons Why
Movies/Books like: Five Feet Apart, The Fault in Our Stars, The Lovely Bones, If I Stay, Everything, Everything, Before I Fall
Other books written by this author: If I Stay, Just One Day, I Was Here, Leave Me, I Have Lost My Way
Teaching After Life in Class
Content
Language: Mature language throughout
Sex/Romance: There are several different romantic relationship storylines in this book. Two involve sexual activity, but nothing is ever descriptive or graphic--it's a closed-door writing style. The other relationships have kissing scenes.
Violence/Scariness: The main character dies in a hit-and-run traffic accident while riding her bike. A teenage girl nearly dies from a severe allergic reaction. There is also a brief scene in which an adult punches a teenage boy he believes is responsible for his daughter’s death.
Drinking/Smoking/Drugs: One character works at a bar. He struggles with drugs/drinking addiction after the death of his girlfriend.
Class Novel-ability:
I really liked this book, but it wouldn’t work well as a full class novel. It doesn’t have enough broad appeal, and some of the content may be too mature for classroom analysis. That said, I did love the multiple POVs, the writing style, and the interesting narrative structure. It’s definitely a book individual students will enjoy and one that can encourage them to read more—just not a contender for a whole-class read.
The Star Qualities
It has so many POVs. Each chapter switches between characters. Of course, there are multiple chapters from the main characters’ perspectives, but there are also many more—even from minor characters, or ones who are never mentioned again. Each perspective adds richness to the story, bringing in more detail and layering the narrative in a really interesting way.
This book is featured on the Good Morning America YA Book Club list. I love that they have a list just for YA audiences! There are so many book clubs and celebrity picks geared toward adults, so it’s great to see curated recommendations specifically for teens and YA readers. You can check out the rest of the titles on their YA list—there are tons of great options, including some I’ve reviewed here on YA Lit Sidekick.
The author, Gayle Forman, has written many other popular YA romance novels. I remember reading some of them in high school. If her intense, emotional writing style matches your students’ interests, there are plenty of other books for them to explore—and some have even been adapted into films. That can be a great hook to get students excited about reading!
Book Talk Read Aloud Section
If you have the physical book, read the first chapter, pages 1-4.
If you don't, read the same pages (location 385-location 433) in the reading sample here.
"Reading Like a Writer" Mentor Texts
This passage is short, powerful, and effective. I really like the way it ends with dramatic short sentence fragments and paragraph breaks. There’s repetition, along with juxtaposition and contradictory phrases. It all works together to create an extremely emotional, almost haunting, reflective mood and tone.
I really like the tone of this passage. It’s reflective and detached, which makes it a perfect wrap-up. I think it’s a great way to conclude a narrative. There’s strong symbolism and vivid imagery, along with repetition and parallel structure. The rhythm of the sentence lengths and phrasing works really well—it just flows. There are so many craft moves here for students to notice and try in their own writing. Even adding just one of these elements could strengthen the ending of a piece.
I really like the way this passage gives us an inside look at the narrator’s conflicting feelings. She’s happy to be back with her family, but she’s struggling with the sacrifices they have to make in order for her to start a new life with them. I especially like the author’s use of rhetorical questions—they reflect how people actually think, which makes the moment feel honest and true. The juxtaposition of emotions, along with the rhetorical questions and parallel structure, all work together to build this conflicted tone.
Sentences for Combining and Imitation
Sentence sets for combining:
"I can remember the rust of his bumper, the squeal of his tires, the look of pure horror as I somersaulted over the windshield of his car." (After Life, p. 254)
I can remember the rust of his bumper.
I can remember the squeal of his tires.
I can remember his look of pure horror.
It was the look he had as I somersaulted over the windshield of his car.
"She’d graduated from college with a marketing degree, gotten a well-paying job at a pharmaceutical company, rented a high-rise apartment with a view of the city, and gone out to nice dinner with friends who had never heard the names Amber Crane or Calvin Judd." (p. 177)
She'd graduated from college with a marketing degree.
She'd gotten a well-paying job at a pharmaceutical company.
She rented a high-rise apartment with a view of the city.
She had gone out to dinner with friends.
Those friends had never heard the names Amber Crane or Calvin Judd.
"When he announced that day’s assignment was to write their own obituary, the class went through the usual stages: the laughter, the posturing and bravado, and then, as they got to work, a near universal silence." (p. 21)
He announced that day's assignment.
It was to write their own obituary.
The class went through the usual stages.
There was laughter.
There was posturing and bravado.
Then they got to work.
And then there was a near universal silence.
Sentences for Imitation:
This author has a particular gift for writing in an introspective, emotional style. Her words are simple, but deeply emotional and powerful. There were many sentences that stayed with me long after I read them. I’ve included some examples below, along with a few that have especially interesting structure. There’s a lot here you could share with students and invite them to imitate in their own writing.
"He had trouble focusing, unable to shake the feeling that he’d forgotten something, like maybe he’d left the stove on, except he didn’t cook (what college sophomore did?)." (p. 27)
"I recognize the voice, fluty and mellifluous, capable of doing the best animal impressions: duck, cow, horse, pig." (p. 85)
"Mom makes one of her lists, divvying up jobs like she used to do with weekend chores, though instead of vacuum rugs or fold laundry, it contains tasks like get traveler’s checks and collect pawnable jewelry." (p. 201)
"I peer inside the box. It’s a hodgepodge of school things: a poem I won a prize for in fourth grade, a play I wrote sophomore year, the clay handprints I made in kindergarten, and other random homework assignments. I can’t believe they saved all this. But maybe what’s clutter when you’re alive becomes treasure when you’re not." (p. 35)
"There’s a brief pause before Jeremy answers, and in silence I hear everything: babies crying and bicycle bells ringing and hands clapping and lips kissing and waves lapping and crickets chirping and choirs singing and all the sounds of life, life, life." (p. 257)
"Her mom starts to sob but it’s a different tenor than it has been all these years, not choked in grief but laced in joy, because love and loss are the flip sides of the same coin." (p. 259)
Used this book in your classroom? Tell us how in the comments!
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